Tharaka Nithi is one of the 47 counties in Kenya and has a population of 393,177 and 109,860 households. The county has demonstrated strong political will towards the community health program, which has seen it committing to pay USD 30 monthly stipend for its 1,265 Community Health Volunteers (CHVs) – the highest in the country. It is against this backdrop that the Financing Alliance for Health (FAH) embarked on an exciting partnership with the county in 2021, to help strengthen other areas of their community health program and specifically around entrenching it for sustainability – a partnership that culminated in the launch of the county’s first ever costed Community Health Strategy, 2021-2025.
Developed through a consultative process involving a multitude of key community health stakeholders and validation meetings, the strategy has CHVs at its core, acknowledging their vital role in bridging inequalities to health access and aims to provide a framework for implementation of all the community health services in a standardized manner.
The recent publishing of the strategy on the county website is the latest step in a process that began with a stakeholders’ forum held in February 2021. The forum provided a great opportunity to identify community health service program gaps and propose strategic and sustainable interventions, which were pivotal in the development of the costed strategy.
Building off the recommendations from the Kenya Community Health strategy 2020–2025, the Kenya Community Health Policy, 2020-2030 and other guiding policies as well as the county specific situational analysis, the strategy has six core focus areas, including:
- Strengthening leadership and governance for community health services
- Mobilizing innovative and sustainable financing for community health
- Building a motivated, skilled, and equitably distributed community health workforce
- Strengthening the delivery of integrated, comprehensive and high-quality community health services
- Increasing availability, quality, demand, and utilization of data for community health
- Ensuring availability of commodities and supplies for community health
Together, these six focus areas will provide a holistic approach to creating a standardized and robust community health system in the county.
Next steps
The launch of the strategy is a key milestone in FAH’s commitment to bring down the continually growing community health funding gap down to zero. FAH will continue to support the county to mobilize resources for community health services especially through the recently established partnership coordination framework. This framework aims to accelerate resource mobilization efforts to ensure that CHVs like Euridice Gatwiri are recognized and adequately reimbursed for their tireless efforts in serving their communities. The partnership is also a commitment to transform the strategy from a static document into transformative action.
As a county whose vision is to ensure affordable and quality healthcare for all its residents, this process marks a critical step in their journey towards universal health coverage.