The One Million Community Health Workers (1mCHW) Campaign is aiming to expand community health workers in sub-Saharan African countries to…yes, 1 million health workers!
These community health workers bring care to those who typically don’t have access to even basic health or medicine services. At Access Our Medicine, we were absolutely thrilled to meet with people who are helping bring medicine to rural areas which typically don’t have access.
This Campaign is working to realize some of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals: to eliminate child mortality, improve maternal health, and battle diseases like HIV/AIDS and Malaria. While the Millennium Development Goals are set to expire next year, this campaign will keep pushing past 2015 to continue their critical work and help establish universal health coverage (UHC)!
Placing trained health workers in communities has proven to be effective in all these areas, especially in impoverished rural communities. The 1mCHW Campaign promotes a unique program that involves affordable home testing kits, the use of technology for increased supervision, communication and data collection, and the rapid training of lay-persons to administer tests and dispense these medications. Although limited in their clinical experience, these health workers are trained regarding issues specific to each country and have real time access to more experienced support to help connect people in their communities with the health care they need.
Learn more about the Campaign and how you can help at http://1millionhealthworkers.org.
