Mobile platform boosts training of community health workers
Community volunteers Patrick Malachi (left) and Wycliffe Ogenya pass health messages to a Kibera resident last week using the HELP mobile platform. PHOTO | SARAH OOKO
What you need to know:
The Health Enablement and Learning Platform offers text and audio packages that volunteers can easily access for self-training.
The tool allows volunteers to learn from the comfort of their homes.
They then use skills gained to train residents and assist the sick.
It is a sunny afternoon in Kibera slum. Aside from the scorching sun causing sweaty foreheads and sluggish movements, residents are busy going about their daily activities.
People are washing clothes and cooking along dusty roads as others go about cleaning the environment and unclogging stagnant water pools.
Patrick Malachi, a community health volunteer (CHV) who also resides in the informal settlement, visits different households passing across health messages such as proper food and environmental hygiene to prevent a myriad of diseases and deaths in the Nairobi-based slum.
The Ministry of Health (MoH) recruited volunteers in 2008 when it rolled out a countrywide initiative known as the Community Health Strategy (CHS) aimed at involving and engaging communities to adopt healthy lifestyles.
Health Permanent Secretary Khadija Kassachon notes that for the volunteers to perform their roles effectively, MoH has had to incur millions of shillings on training them.
But due to financial constraints, she says, the ministry is often forced to train only few people and in most instances rely on support from partners to reach the volunteers with continuous knowledge on various health issues.
“But still, this is not enough.”
With an aim of addressing this training gap; Safaricom, Amref Health Africa and technology firm Accenture partnered to create a mobile training application for CHVs. This technological innovation, known as the Health Enablement and Learning Platform (HELP) offers text and audio packages that volunteers can easily access for self-training at no cost.
The pilot phase of the HELP initiative, launched in 2013, has since benefitted more than 300 CHVs in Kibera, Mwingi and Samburu where it was piloted at a cost of Sh41 million.
The second phase of the project, which began early this year, will train another 3,000 health volunteers together with their supervisors for a period of two years. It is funded to the tune of Sh138 million by Safaricom’s M-Pesa foundation.
The mobile training platform is compatible with all phones and can therefore be used by any one who owns one.
Whereas previous training sessions were conducted face to face thus requiring MoH to incur venue and other charges, the HELP tool allows CHVs to learn from the comfort of their homes at no cost. Registered users receive text messages informing them of a topic to be covered in a particular week.
Study areas include maternal and child health; data collection methods and techniques and prevention and management of infectious diseases. The topics are broken down throughout the week to facilitate a deeper understanding of pertinent health challenges.
The information enables CHVs like Malachi to dwell on real health challenges on the ground, thus saving more lives. Cognisant of various teaching approaches, the HELP digital platform also uses pre-recorded audio sessions for training.
CHVs listen to short plays and brief lectures after which they are asked questions, through the mobile phone app, to test their understanding of issues covered in a particular lesson.
Mr Malachi remembers a recorded play that featured an expectant woman complaining of severe abdominal pain, swollen feet and bleeding. She thought it was normal to feel that way but some of her friends thought otherwise.
Mr Malachi was then asked by the HELP ‘‘teacher’’ to give his opinion and he eventually learned that the woman’s symptoms were danger signs in pregnancy.
Key in feedback
“I can never forget these lessons. In fact, two weeks later I encountered a similar situation and immediately referred the woman to a health facility,” he told Digital Business.
The platform also assigns CHVs tasks to perform in their communities while requiring them to key in feedback which can then be reviewed by their supervisors.
Whereas in the past CHVs had to rely solely on their memory, the app now allows them to get refresher courses at all times by sending messages to a specified number which provides them with summaries of various health topics covered. It also has a special group chat which links all CHVs serving a particular community.
“This has helped us communicate and send alerts during fire outbreaks or disease epidemics in the slum which require us to work together,” Mr Malachi says.
Moreover, the HELP tool facilitates easy communication between the CHVs and their supervisors.
“Whenever anyone has a problem I get a message through the application and attend to the person immediately,” says Wycliffe Ogenya who supervises a group of CHVs in Kibera.
He is also able to monitor the training progress of the team through the application. The HELP initiative is leveraging on the growing number of Kenyans currently using mobile phone, about 80 per cent of the population, to provide a service that will enable the health sector to meet its millennium development goals thereby improving the livelihoods of Kenyans.
The CHS approach is already bearing fruit. A 2010 UNICEF report showed that there was a significant decrease in maternal and child mortality in regions where the strategy was being implemented.
With the current devolution of healthcare, it is expected that technological innovations like HELP will further accelerate the progress and impact of CHS to enable the Health ministry meet its objectives.
