Authors: Sydney Chauwa Phiri, Margaret Lippitt Prust, Caroline Phiri Chibawe, Ronald Misapa, Jan Willem van den Broek and Nikhil Wilmink
In 2010, Zambia created a cadre of community health workers called Community Health Assistants (CHAs). This program continues to be scaled up to meet the needs of Zambia’s rural population. This study summarizes the factors that have aided the scale-up of the CHA program as well as the challenges. The study determined that CHAs play a critical role in providing a wide range of services to community members. However, CHAs continue to face challenges such as infrequent supervision, lack of medical and non-medical supplies, and challenges with the mobile data reporting system. The study concludes that these challenges need to be addressed in order to optimize the impact of CHAs. Zambia’s Ministry of Health is currently addressing these issues as part of the National Health Strategy Plan 2017-2021.
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Resource Topic: Community Health Workers/Volunteers, Program Evaluation, Scale-up
Resource Type: Evaluation
Year: 2017
Region: Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)
Country: Zambia
Publisher May Restrict Access: No