Samburu County to offer mentorship program for community health workers

A mentorship program for health workers and community health volunteers in Samburu county has been handed over to Samburu County Government.

The program, which was being funded by USAID through Amref Health Africa’s health program Afya Timiza, was sensitizing health workers to help in improving family planning, and maternal health care in the county for the past three years since 2018.

Speaking during the hand over, Afya Timiza deputy Chief of party Isaac Ndwiga said the Samburu County Government is adequately prepared to take over the program.

“We celebrate handing over of the county mentorship program which was created three years ago and now has reached its maturity with over 500 health workers graduating through the program,” he said.

He added that Afya Timiza sort to promote sustainable access to quality family planning, reproductive maternal and child health and nutrition.

Samburu County Chief Officer for Health Sam Nakope said the county government will ensure the program is continued. The main objective of the program was to team up skilled health workers and non skilled community health volunteers to improve health services delivery across the county.

He added that the program was initiated to enhance capacity building for health workers in order to reduce infant and maternal deaths.

“The mentorship program is about capacity building of community health volunteers and health workers, the program entails conjoining a skilled health worker with unskilled community health volunteers,” said Nakope

“We have established that a number of maternal deaths occur because of poor decision making by Health volunteers, lack of proper monitoring and delay in starting treatment and these are the critical areas we want to deal with.”