Background
The BHI is envisioned as the entry point for all community level health activities in the Community/ Boma and to close the gap between health facilities and communities by delivering an integrated package of health education, health promotion and disease prevention activities supported by Community Health Workers and Volunteer Home Health Promoters. Understanding the crucial need for strong community health systems, the BHI programme was initiated as a government-led strategy in 2017 to strengthen as well as improve access to health systems across the country. Community Health Workers (CHWs) known as Boma Health Workers (BHWs) have been trained to provide promotional, preventative, and chosen curative health services at the Boma level.
The proposed intervention aims at increasing access to integrated child health care services at the grassroot level through the Boma health initiative (BHI) program. “BHI is a government community health strategy aiming at increasing universal health coverage. It mainly focusses on integrated community case management of childhood illnesses”. Through BHI approach, the project will establish ten (10) Boma health teams with ten Boma health workers (BHWs) each, who will be trained and equipped with respiratory timers and beads count for detecting pneumonia from children, Malaria test kits for diagnosing malaria. Each BHW will be tasked to serve 40 households. The project is procuring specific essential drugs to run the program such as amoxicillin tablets, artesunate and amodiaquine (ACTs) according to age group, ORS and Zinc. In addition, rectal artesunate procured and used as pre-referral treatment for severe cases of malaria. BHWs are undertaking anthropometric measurement of children 6 to 59 months using MUAC tape to screen malnutrition cases and refer them to nutrition sites. BHWs will also be undertaking routine screening of children who defaulted from immunization and refer them for immunization. The intervention has also established two county level vaccination teams with each team comprising of vaccinator, recorder and social mobilizer to undertake weekly outreach immunization sessions in hard to reach communities. BHWs is conducting house to house preventive and health promotional awareness on child health. Data Collection and reporting tools, Job aids are being provided to BHWs.
Project Goal
This project goal is to improve access to health care services in communities which are hard to reach hence contributing to the reduction of underfive morbidities and mortalities.
Geographical Coverage
ARDF is currently implementing the project for 15 months (January 2023- March 2024) in Aweil South County, Northern Barh El Ghazal of Upper Nile state, South Sudan.
Target Population
The project is targeting 69,120 persons in Aweil South County, Upper Nile state.