Global Primary Care

Global Primary Care’s support for Community Health Workers in Lesotho

There are 5,000-7,000 active community health workers providing community-based health services throughout Lesotho’s rural villages. Supervision, re-training, and financial incentives are virtually non-existent for these dedicated volunteers, yet they are critical to providing healthcare in Lesotho, which has an extremely limited number of trained doctors and nurses.

Having worked with a small subset of these Community Health Workers focused on HIV counseling and testing in the Berea district, Global Primary Care is interested in piloting various strategies in the Leribe and Berea districts of Lesotho to address these gaps. This pilot program will include training, incentives, and strengthened relationships with primary care facilities throughout the country. Specifically, this includes the following:

• Training and restructuring of community health workers associated with health centers, including systems for their sustainable supervision and follow-up.
• Incentives for Community Health Workers including commodity sales by Community Health Workers for income generation, a fee-for-service scheme, partnerships with private businesses, endowment support, and village-sponsorship of Community Health Workers as well as other non-monetary incentives. These potentially include scholarships for continued education of select long-time Community Health Workers or introduction of a career ladder linked to performance and length of commitment.
• The roll-out of mobile phones for use by community health workers and their nurse supervisors for the purpose of clinical supervision and as a method for obtaining clinical or managerial guidance.
• Systems for improved consultation and appropriate referrals between all levels of care in order to enhance the reliability and quality of community-based care.

Fund-raising target for Global Primary Care’s Community Health Worker program - $50,000