Establishing a community partnership model for primary health care

A key aspect of this work has been to build capacity of the national institutions to review the different community engagement projects in the country – including from Save the Children and Aga Khan Foundation, as well as the Community  Action for Health (CAH) approach from neighboring Kyrgyzstan.

The result is a unique model that offers the flexibility for different development partners to buy into, and gets away from individuals involvement to a team approach. The community health team (CHT) members are trained as facilitators of participatory rural assessment processes to set community health priorities, as well as being involved in health promotion activities, health planning, and interacting alongside PHC staff with the community actors of vertical programmes that have some basic clinical tasks.

The benefits include: In all villages there is a CHT, and in almost all they are "active" in some way, including that they are informed in time in case someone falls sick, and about pregnancies. In the meanwhile CHT members told know about basic health risks and know how to react (hydrate a child with high temperature, bring women to the health facilities for giving birth: or preparing dietary food for a family member who has hypertension). Taking part in health planning brings greater transparency and accountability, and as well many impressive team-initiated activities are taking place that increase the strength of the CHTs and the people to come together and do something for the benefit of the whole village e.g. supporting disabled people in their communities, organizing regular waste removals, initiating women's walking groups, construction of public toilets, etc. In monthly meetings, CHTs discuss the progress of the health actions and own initiatives and evaluate their own work at the end of the year which facilitates the overall organizational development of the CHTs.