Health Program Update - Community Health Workers

One main outreach of the Health Program is its use of the a network of Community Health Workers (CHWs) to reach all members of the local Maasai community.  These are villagers and citizens who volunteer their time to help the community and are each responsible for a portion of the households in their area, making sure these households have access to the latest updates from the health clinic and follow up regularly with any recommended treatment.  The key to successful outreach by the CHWs is training; this is especially crucial for our planned community-wide survey.

In late July and early August a volunteer from Boston came and stayed with the MWCT, working with us to develop a visual training system for Community Health Workers and beginning the training modules with the CHWs in Iltilal.  Our goal is to train all CHWs on the Group Ranch; the Iltilal CHWs have already completed this process.

The Iltilal Community Health Workers gather for a training session.

The next step in surveying the local community and beginning this outreach is determining which CHWs are responsible for specific parts of the village and making sure no households are missed.  This was the work of this past week, when we met with the CHWs, sat down with maps and Google Earth, and started the work of mapping the village of Iltilal.  It turned out to be an incredibly successful day - we identified nearly all the bomas and households in the village, and the CHWs really enjoyed the mapping process.

This also gave us by far the most accurate Iltilal population estimate since the 2009 census, which we knew was no longer accurate following the extended drought since that time.   The final rough count was 304 households, which equates to roughly 2400 residents.  Furthermore, we were able to identify gaps in coverage by CHWs, and see where we needed to train more to better accommodate the needs of Iltilal.  This process is ongoing, but we've very happy with the recent results!