Community Health Strategy gets financial boost from Japanese agency
Dr Kevin De-Cock of the Centre for Disease Control, Health secretary James Macharia and JICA country representative Hideo Eguchi at a past function. JICA has donated Sh200 million to Kenya's Community Health Strategy. PHOTO | DIANA NGILA | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
Since the implementation of CHS began in 2008, there has been an improvement in immunisation, antenatal care and reduction of childhood diseases, PS says.
Kenya’s Community Health Strategy (CHS) programme has received a Sh200 million boost following a donation by the Japan International Corporation Agency (JICA).
Mr Hideo Eguchi, the Chief Representative of JICA's Kenya Office, noted that a huge proportion of these finances will be used to strengthen the capacity of county governments to facilitate effective implementation of CHS at the grassroots.
“We need to embrace this community approach to healthcare as it is significant to Kenya achieving universal access to health services,” said Ms Khadijah Kassachoon, Permanent Secretary (PS) for Health during Thursday’s handing over ceremony which marked the culmination of a three year technical cooperation between the Ministry of Health (MOH) and JICA.
The pact is aimed at strengthening MOH capacity to deliver community health services in Kenya. She noted that since the implementation of CHS began in 2008, there has been an improvement in immunisation, antenatal care and reduction of childhood diseases.
“Major epidemics like cholera and malaria have also not occurred in the last five years as mothers know what to do to facilitate prevention,” stated Dr Kassachoon.
The CHS approach seeks to improve the health status of Kenyans by involving and engaging communities to take charge of their health. Through the approach, communities are sensitised to adopt healthy lifestyles including good hygiene, family planning, regular exercises and healthy diets so as to prevent a myriad of infectious and non-communicable diseases.
People also learn how to make better use of health facilities in their areas.
Prof Miriam Were, CHS Goodwill Ambassador, noted that MOH started implementing the community strategy after a 2004 evaluation of Kenya’s health status yielded unsatisfactory results.
“We noticed that despite the county’s huge investment in healthcare, our people were still sick. Mothers and children were dying. And HIV was wiping away families. Hospitals were there, but only few people used them.”
She adds: “So we realised that we had to reach out to communities. We needed to empower them, so that they could take charge of their health. They had to know why it was important for them to be healthy.”
Since then, some progress has been made. A 2010 UNICEF report showed that in regions where the CHS strategy was being implemented, there was a significant decrease in maternal and child mortality.
The CHS goals are largely implemented by community health volunteers (CHVs) who are chosen by people from their communities. “These people are known on the ground and are thus best suited to reach out to the community,” Prof Were noted. She said that the CHVs also play a key role of linking sick people in the community to health facilities.
The three year technical cooperation between the Ministry of Health (MOH) and JICA led to the development of CHS policies, guidelines and tools which will be used to scale up community health services to all parts of Kenya.
“But we need to disseminate these documents to the counties, facilitate advocacy and sensitise health officials there on how to implement and sustain gains already made by the community health strategy,” noted Ms Makiko Kinoshita, Chief Advisor for the JICA CHS project.
Dr Maurice Siminyu, Chair of the County Executive Council noted that following the devolution of health services, each county has selected a focal person to foresee the implementation of CHS in their regions.
“We are putting in place structures to enable us roll the strategy effectively,” he said.
