Day Nine Summary

We had a Lovely Day! Dr. Uchenna introduced us to an amazing cadre of Community Health Workers. The first colleagues we met were leaders in the Buffalo City Municipality.

We witnessed multidisciplinary collaboration between nursing team and community health workers. It was so inspiring! 🤩. Community Health Workers are empowered to service and manage the care of their patients as long as it falls within their scope of work. Obviously, with nursing oversight and direct collaboration.

Interestingly, the public health systems in Africa has a triaging model that prioritizes care based on health acuity. For instance, if a patient is experiencing a medical emergency that the local clinic cannot address, he/she is referred to the regional health center or designated hospital.

This model helps create greater opportunities to access immidiate care based on priority needs. At the same time unclogging the heath care system.

The patients we observed today, patiently I waited their turn to receive medical care. Furthermore, to assure equitable access to care, the clinical team embedded a number system to help maintain order and services coordination.

As we became much more acquanted with one another (CHWs), we began to engage into deep conversations about community and professional challenges. We also dialogued and learned about the socioeconomic infrastructures that are negatively impacting many rural and urban communities.

We also elevated the amazing and life-changing impacting work CHWs are having in communities. The simple fact that they are showing up every day, as advocates, educators and social supoorters to their patients and communities, despite the challenging conditions, deserves honorable recognition.

The second visit was to our colleagues in Duncan Villeage. This cadre of CHWs were based in a more urban environment. The space was ample and adapted to a city needs. They had varios wards that provided different services: vaccination, women health, primary care, lab, dispensary (pharmacy), etc.

These CHWs were fairly new in the field but had lots of opportunities to serve their communities during the pandemic. Most of their activities were focused on outreach, team care management and community education.

It is our privilege to share the space with such inspiring group of people. Thank you for allowing to learn and share with you!

We look forward to seeing you during our monthly meetings and/or upcoming annual conference in October.