By Kudakwashe Pembere
Africa Centre for Disease Control (Africa CDC) on Thursday commenced a training of 500 community health workers in Harare and Chitungwiza in the management of mild to moderate cases of cholera, sensitization and managing oral rehydration points in the communities they serve.
The Africa CDC which has been supporting Zimbabwe over the years in various outbreak responses. They have been supporting the Government since the start of outbreak leading to the African Union’s health arm’s decision to capacitate the community health workers who are the first port-of-call in primary health care.
Through this training, CHWs they will be conducting door to door sensitisation on cholera, management of oral rehydration points, community surveillance and health promotion. These CHWs have been trained on an integrated approach to respond to cholera and other outbreaks including polio especially vaccination uptake in the communities.
The community health workers come from Kuwadzana, Highfield, Glen View, and Budiriro and other districts. The training ends on Saturday.
With Harare being the most burdened province in the country, it also emerged it has the lowest vaccination uptake.
Speaking to HealthTimes, the Ministry of Health and Child Care Director for Policy and Planning Mr Stephen Banda officiated this initiative on behalf of the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry Dr Aspect Maunganidze commended Africa CDC, the WHO for training these community health workers.
“Given Harare, we have an issue in terms of cholera, so we can only make strides in fighting cholera and control cholera when we make sure our community is made aware. The community health workers have been trained, they’ve been given all the necessary tools to go back to their community and interact with the community, teaching them the good manners on how we can promote good hygiene,” he said.
“Cholera is a very stubborn disease but measures or strategies that can be used to fight it are simple. But if you are nt strong in terms of your prevention measures, then cholera like I said, it is a very stubborn disease, and it can wipe the entire community,” he said. “So I commend CDC, WHO and UNICEF in coming together to make sure that they teach our community members so that they can go wherever they are within their communities and teach others how to behave during cholera.”
He added that proper Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) helps prevent cholera and other communicable diseases.
“And thereafter, we should make sure that they continue having such type of education so that they prevent cholera and in other diseases, because hygiene caters for most of these other communicable diseases, they can easily be prevented if people are taught how to do the prevention,” said Mr Banda.
With Harare having the highest number of cholera cases in the country, it emerged the province’s Oral Cholera Vaccine uptake is the lowest compared to other provinces at less than 75 percent.
“This is what we’ve been commenting on, this is what we’ve been preaching there. The community go out there, tell your community members that it is important for you to take these vaccines because that’s where the issues are in terms of our hygiene.
“Coming up with the infrastructure it can take long, it’s temporary. But once we are on vaccine, we are also saying the responsible authorities are also putting together the infrastructure so that there is at least clean water,” he said.
The Health Promotion manager in Harare City Mr Israel Makwara said, “The aim of the meeting is to have community based management of mild to moderate cases of cholera in the community so they do not complicate [get worse] as well as intensify community health education on cholera so communities lead cholera prevention efforts with the assistance of the Harare city health through community health workers [health promoters].”
According to the national cholera daily situation report, the Ministry of Health recorded 155 new suspected cases and 29 lab confirmed cases. Harare had 8 277 new suspected cases and 772 were confirmed.
