Relief as Turkana health volunteers receive bicycles to ease mobility
Ms Everline Namuya, a community health volunteer at Turkwel Ward cycling one of the bicycles handed to her to facilitate mobility. She has been volunteering to offer primary health services at her village on foot.
Community health volunteers, often the difference between life and death in remote areas in Turkana County, have received a boost after a non-governmental organisation donated 48 bicycles to ease their mobility in Katilu and Turkwel wards.
PanAfricare Country Director Dominic Godana said the organisation was partnering with Turkana County's Department of Health to ease the movement of community health volunteers, who are an essential element of primary health care in remote areas.
Mr Godana said that through the Improved Approach to Community-based Nutrition in Turkana (Impact) project, they are banking on the volunteers to fight malnutrition by ensuring that households are trained on the need to have kitchen gardens and link mothers to health facilities if they have malnourished children.
He said that due to the vastness of the region, volunteers are also being relied upon to ensure all the 7,200 care group mothers, as well as 880 farmers in the two wards, maintain better agricultural practices by linking them to agriculture extension officers.
Turkana County Health executive Jane Ajele said the devolved unit has recruited more than 3,000 community health volunteers, who are being relied on for targeted health interventions like immunisation, screening for malnutrition and extracting important information from mothers on common diseases to inform better decisions.
Expand coverage
"Community health volunteers are staying with our people in villages and the most critical contribution has been immunisation and referral of children with symptoms of malnutrition to sub-county and county hospitals for treatment. Bicycles will ease their mobility and expand their coverage," Ms Ajele said.
The county has been giving them stipends, she said, and urged more partners to join hands and support the departments responsible for preventing diseases by improving dietary diversity.
"As a county government, we want to move from treatment or curing diseases and concentrate on prevention. That is why we are putting more synergies on the community health volunteers to prevent the diseases at village levels before they spread. We are spending a lot of money to treat our people," she said.
PanAfricare Country Director Dominic Godana handing over a bicycle to one of the community health volunteers at Turkwel Ward.
This financial year, Sh246 million has been allocated to procure drugs, she said, but if the volunteers do their work well to prevent diseases at village levels, the devolved unit will invest more in primary health care and raise the stipends.
Everline Namuya, a community health volunteer in Turkwel ward, said she was struggling to move from village to village to deliver health messages as she did not have a means of transport.
"This bicycle will to a great extent ease my work as opposed to walking under the scorching sun," she said.
Proper maintenance
Gabriel Echakan, from Lorugum village, said he has been able to cover more households a day to teach his community the importance of embracing agri-nutrition and seeking services at health centres.
The bicycles will be attached to linked health facilities for proper maintenance.
Recently, a community health volunteer played a pivotal role in ensuring that Arot Sugwar, who walked into Kalemnyang dispensary just eight kilometres from her home in Kotela village, Loima Sub-County delivered her quadruplets.
Ms Sugwar said she was expecting one baby but on visiting the health facility after being directed by a community health volunteer she gave birth without complications.
