South Africa currently faces multiple disease burdens, with the HIV/AIDS epidemic, high burden of tuberculosis, high maternal and child mortality, high levels of violence and injuries and a growing burden of non-communicable diseases including cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, chronic respiratory conditions and cancer. Community health in South Africa is delivered through primary care clinics, staffed by nurses. Ward-based outreach teams (WBOTs) comprised of community health workers are part of the South African National Department of Health’s (NDoH) primary health care strategy for improving health outcomes.
CHWI is playing an active role with the NDoH to convene partners to launch the Community Health Platform in South Africa—a collaborative solution to strengthen the role of community health workers, link them to primary health care facilities, allocate resources where they are most needed and ensure adequate training and supervision of this important cadre.
Currently, CHWI is working with partners to:
- Support the NDoH implementation of community health worker policy across South Africa to ensure standardized training, supportive supervision and equipping of community health workers to better serve their communities.
- Provide psychosocial support and supportive care to community health workers across South Africa
- Build the capacity of community health workers to deliver integrated, quality Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Adolescent and Child Health, Early Childhood Development and PMTCT services through m2m’s integrated facility-community service platform
- Support the scale up of a digital health platform to support pandemic response in South Africa and beyond
- Deliver vital health information to communities and health workers through accessible mobile technologies, while creating channels for their feedback
- Scale alternative models of primary health care through nurse owned and operated primary health care clinics
- Explore Nursing/Midwifery Platform in South Africa in order to increase the number of “global standard” trained nurses and midwives.
Partners in Southern Africa include:
