Bicycles abet fight against malaria

Getongoroma Community Health Workers receive bicycles from KeNAAM to help them respond quickly to distress calls.

The fight against malaria in Kuria district, Nyanza has gone a notch higher following the introduction of bicycles to aid rapid response.

Community Health Workers in Migori county can now visit up to 25 homes down from the 10 they were visiting in a week, courtesy of the bicycle donations from the Kenya NGO’s Alliance Against Malaria (KeNAAM) initiative.

The project funded by the Global Fund Round 10, seeks to reach communities in the malaria burdened region with prevention and curative measures in a bid to curb needless deaths from the disease.
According to Government statistics malaria claims about 16,000 lives annually despite it being preventable and curable.

“Visiting client’s homesteads has been a major challenge due to the high cost of transport and the hustle of moving from one distant home to the next especially during rainy seasons,” said Mr. Samuel Gekene the chairman of Nyamagagana Community, Migori county.
Speaking during a handover ceremony at the Kehancha district hospital where 40 bicycles were issued out to Community Health Workers, Gekene said the move would enable them access hard to reach and distanced areas in real time.
Prior to the introduction of the bicycles a Community Health Worker could visit about ten  families in a week by using public transport and at times trekking long distances.
However, thanks to the bicycle they can now attend to about 25 families in the quest to bring these vital services closer to the people.

A community health worker is charged with the responsibility of overseeing the health of 100 households. With the bicycles this has enabled facilitate their function more easily as more time can be used for service delivery than on logistics.

The KeNAAM bicycle initiative is part of the projects being rolled out to strengthen the universal prevention and treatment of malaria by facilitating quick response to distress call.

Gekene said having regular house to house checkups to ensure that families are healthy, was proving difficult to reach everyone in the community and the health workers had to travel around on foot.
The Community Heath Strategy Focal Person Mr. Samuel Juma observed that community health workers were major stakeholders in the health sector in the area.

He explained that their role of promoting primary health care at the grass root could not be underestimated in the war against malaria.

Undocumented evidence indicates that Community Health Workers are responsible for saving roughly one life per year but by use of this bicycles the numbers of lives saved are projected to increase.
The project is financed by Global Fund to fight HIV, TB and Malaria and is being managed by AMREF in Kenya through the Malaria Round 10 grant.

KeNAAM is a national NGO which brings together Community, faith based organization, private sector and national NGO’s who have program in malaria and related health. It has a membership of over 80 partners. It complements the work of National Malaria Control Program by engaging the non state actors in the deliver the national vision of a malaria free Kenya