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{
    "id": 1485010,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1485010/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 272,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Busia County, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Catherine Omanyo",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Speaker. I support the Bill because community health workers are just like doctors or nurses who have been brought to the nearest door where a sick person is. I have so many friends who are community health workers and they tell me what they go through. Each one of them has a niche. They have several sick people. They understand the language of the patients that they visit. So, they help patients who cannot even tell where to get proper healthcare services by connecting them to the right health facilities. They also understand the language and the culture of the patients. Some patients cannot even go to a hospital to see a nurse or a doctor and tell them what is ailing them because of cultural boundaries on how to communicate. However, with a community health worker who speaks their language, even if the patient speaks in parables about their condition, the health worker is able to pick it up and express to the doctor what is ailing the patient. The doctor will then treat the right disease. Those people just come from villages. Some cannot even express themselves in Kiswahili or in English properly. They can just speak their mother tongue. Those community health workers help a lot. The social support they give to patients, especially the bedridden, HIV-positive- living people, and the counselling they give, is so good because they are so passionate at their work. They understand better how to counsel or handle any person with such a challenging condition. Maybe, because some community health workers have gone through that; that is, they have been affected or infected. Those CHPs in villages come in handy so much because there is also a shortage of nurses and doctors. You can find one psychiatrist nurse in a county being depended on by over 800 people. The CHPs actually help a lot when they come in. They are like assistant nurses or assistant doctors when it comes to places without enough nurses or doctors or clinical officers. They also promote health. Every time, they sit with patients or people who are still not courageous enough to accept and visit a doctor. Every time they sit with people in the villages, they promote health. They speak about prevention. They speak about ways that one can live positively for over 20 or 30 years even when they have this or that condition. Many a times, when they have meetings, it is very interesting seeing how they use minimal or limited information that could not reach people easily. They do it so easily and in a way that people understand, including those with limited education. They can still understand that language and take care of themselves. It is very bad that they do not earn well. They earn about Ksh2,000 a month, surely, and yet the risks they encounter every day are too high. We have to look into how to promote CHPs to do a better job. They are already passionate about it. They are already volunteering. We do not even know whether some of them exist and yet, they exist in the villages. I know we will be talking of a healthier society if they are motivated better. If we have a healthier society, our nation will not be wallowing in the miasma of poverty. Apart from that, those CHPs also have very impressive social skills. They understand every home, where it is, who has what, who recently got this, and who was recently raped. They know everything. It is like village elders. They are closer to the people. If somebody is closer to the societies with one doctor in a county hospital who does not know anything about a village that has people with certain conditions, CHPs bring important information to the right places at the right time. Even if they use mulika mwizi, they have hotline numbers to reach the CCs and the chiefs very quickly to report matters. If our country wants to move well from bottom up, the way we call it, CHPs should be given priority in motivation like getting a better salary and gadgets that can help them. They expose themselves to many risks. We must also think of how to help them to continue being healthy and supporting unhealthy people. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}