228538 National Roll Call for Equal Opportunities for community health workers in Rural Mali

Monday, November 8, 2010

David Awasum, MD, MPH , Jhu/CCP, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, BaMAKO, Mali, Bamako, Mali
Oumar Ouattara, MD, Program Director , Care Mali, USAID Community Health Program/Keneya Ciwara, (KC II), Bamako, Mali
Introduction CHWs intervene in health/FP in Mali. In 2009, a popular estimate was that 48,000 CHW operate in rural health services. The situation of CHWs is very unclear to health planners. No one in Mali knows how many are CHWs are functioning, what training they received and when, located in what areas, or what tools they use. Faced with a dire need to engage CHWs in the promotion of household essential health behaviors (HEHBs), USAID/KC II launched a head count of CHWs. Goal: Ensure geographical coverage, sex representation, quality CHW equipped for delivery of a package of community health services. Objectives: i) determine total CHWs exist; how many trained and in what; how many CHW are equipped for service delivery; and representation by sex. Design: The USAID/Keneya Ciwara II program launched a nationwide roll call of CHWs to ensure among others, that every village has at least two CHW. A computerized tool for district staff to capture and analyze data, operations took place in 954 health catchment areas. Field staff include 9 NGOs, 6 supervisors, and 3 coordinators at central level. In less than a month, preliminary results trickled in from zonal coordinators. Data collated is sent to zonal coordinators who verify it. The draft temporary database is then sent to Bamako. Results: Data collected from 954 health centres reveals so far 16,200 CHWs, among who14,200 are trained in CBD/FP, an under-representation of women, a third equipped; a functional database on CHWs in Mali.

Learning Areas:
Administration, management, leadership
Advocacy for health and health education
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs

Learning Objectives:
Identify the socio-demographic profile of community health workers in the Malian health system Assess the number of community health workkers engaged in community health, their educational level, distribution by sex of the health workers, their location by health catchment areas List the standard equipment for community health workers in the Malian community health program

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I designed the data collection tools and wrote up the paper
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

Back to: 3108.2: Developing CHW Associations and Networks: Opportunities and Challenges