Scaling up community-based services in Senegal's national health system

This presentation describes a national program of community based health services targeted to women and children in Senegal. The program is founded on principals of community mobilization, adapted to the cultural norms of the people who both implement and benefit from these services. At the end of the current project period (2016), over 70% of the national population (9+ million) will access health messages and services directly through this system. A network of community health huts and outreach sites provide an integrated mix of ministry of health (MOH) services, linked to government health posts and centers, and supervised by community members, project implementers and MOH staff. Multiple groups (such as pregnant women, and grandmothers) provide consistent information about common and deadly health problems, which leads to changes in the ways individuals and communities responded to their health challenges. International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGO) directly assist to mobilize communities, build capacity of local organizations. Local NGOs, CBOs and FBOs participate to increase coverage, and the long-term sustainability of the health hut system. In fact, health huts and outreach sites are now recognized as forming the base of the national health system pyramid. This experience suggests that a community program based on mobilization and formative research, and working in concert with public and private partners, may be achieved successfully in about one decade. Lessons learned are described, and statistics are presented to support these results.