Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 943896,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/943896/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 105,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Halake",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13184,
        "legal_name": "Abshiro Soka Halake",
        "slug": "abshiro-soka-halake"
    },
    "content": "We had close to 7,000 community health volunteers. Most of them were in areas of communicable diseases such as prevention of HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis (TB), malaria and immunization. As part of the Community Health Strategy (CHS) for this country, we cannot achieve the UHC without involving community health workers or volunteers as they are called. Our country is now considered a middle income country yet we have quite low budget for health, but we must commend our Government for the recent spike in the health budget. However, we are still below the threshold that will enable us achieve the UHC. Innovative ways of providing access to healthcare as per Article 43 of our Constitution need to be engaged. To achieve good results, we should engage community health volunteers. Sen. Nyamunga’s Motion proposes to train, facilitate and give supplies and some stipends so that they are taken care of. The best support is to ensure that they are evaluated, supervised and provided with their requirements. We have vertical programmes in our country. We have community health volunteers for HIV/AIDS, malaria, TB, immunization and sexual and reproductive health. Perhaps we should start looking at an integrated approach to the community health services. Sen. Nyamunga should consider having an integrated approach. Currently, we have a disturbing trend of many of our young people facing mental health issues. I am sad that Sen. Kasanga is not here. We should consider having community health workers trained on mental health so that they do not just look at HIV/AIDS and malaria alone because we also have mental health issues. There is a gap because mental health has been ostracized. There is stigma to people suffering from mental disabilities, but nobody seems to know what is happening in our communities. Nowadays it becomes news when children kill themselves. We should integrate and train community health workers not just on preventive, promotive and curative health, but also non-linear aspects like mental health. We should have mental health added to the community health services so that our community health volunteers or workers also look at mental status and report back to health facilities that are linked to them to ensure that care is provided. They do not have to become psychiatrists or counselors. Anyway they already are because they live in the communities. Sen. Nyamunga should consider adding mental health and look at this as an integrated approach as opposed to the linear and vertical programmes that we have. If that is done, money spent on community health workers or volunteers will be well spent. Since I used to work for the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS), I can report that the figure of about 10,000 community health volunteers fluctuate depending on the donor funding. It used to be sad because we could train, evaluate, educate and link them to facilities, but we could let them go the minute the donor money increased. We did not know where they used to go. In fact the community health service is almost 80 per cent supported by donor funding from the Global Fund, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO). When international donors pull out, the community health service faces a drawback. So, we need to look at our own--- They used to give us feedback all the time. They said that our country needs to look at domestic solutions for strengthening community health systems. This is a timely The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}