BASIC TRAINING FOR COMMUNITY BASED HEALTH AGENTS (CBHAs)

Community Based Health Agents (CBHAs) are volunteers selected by their communities to be trained to render basic health services to their community members.

CBHAs live in the communities with the people and are involved in the day to day lives of these people.
They are the first point of call for basic ailments especially in rural communities. Their services are most needed in very deprived communities where people have to travel long distances to access healthcare.

They are there very important to the communities.

Recognizing the importance of these CBHAs, HFFG with sponsorship form SIMAVI organized a 10-day basic preventive health training workshop for 46 CBHAs from the 23 beneficiary communities involved in the second phase of the SIMAVI/HFFG CHILD SURVIVAL PROJECT.

The training was designed to equip the Agents with knowledge on basic health issues and empower them render basic health services in their communities. The 46 participants were made up of one male and one female from each of the 23 beneficiary communities.

The topics treated include;

• Overview of Child Survival Project
• Community mobilization
• Roles and responsibilities of CBHAs
• Project Cycle
• Establishment of the Community Health Fund
• Record Keeping
• Family planning
• Malaria prevention and promotion of ITNs and IPT
• Maternal and Newborn care, prevention of maternal and under five mortality
• Nutrition and growth promotion
• Diarrhoea prevention and management of simple diarrhea and home management)
• Water hygiene education in schools and communities
• Behavior Change Communication activities
• Facilitating community meetings
• Effective communication and basic counseling skills

To ensure active participation and proper understanding of the topics being treated, a lot of practice sessions characterized by group work, role plays, discussions and presentations were included in the activities.
Participants were also sensitized to understand the concept of volunteerism.

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