Graduates of WiRED International’s Community Health Worker (CHW) Training Program in Kisumu, Kenya, continue to play an essential role in improving the lives of those in surrounding communities. Since mid-July, 13 CHWs reached 3,360 people and covered health issues as diverse as nutrition and handwashing while also dispelling notions of how COVID-19 is spread.
In low-resource communities around the world, people often are unsure about basic health practices, such as proper handwashing techniques and safe food preparation, much less how to protect themselves from COVID-19.
WiRED International brought our Community Health Worker (CHW) Training Program to Kisumu, Kenya earlier this year, and since then graduates of the month-long course are tending to the health of the populations they serve.
COVID-19, 100-year floods, crop devastation from record waves of locusts, scant health care. Now hunger and worsening mental health are sweeping through communities across Kenya, including in Kisumu where WiRED has been working for many years.
The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic to Kisumu, Kenya, is placing a heavy burden on a population already suffering routinely from disease and lack of basic health care. If that weren’t enough, since early 2020, East Africa has experienced unprecedented waves of locust swarms — a crisis linked to climate change — which has destroyed livestock and crops and threatens to worsen food scarcity.
Letter from Sr. Bernadette in Kenya: Effects of the Coronavirus How One Community WiRED Serves Is Coping with the Global Crisis By: Allison Kozicharow; Edited by Jessie Crowdy WiRED International has worked with Sister Bernadette Nealon at the Pandipieri and Obunga health centers in Kisumu, Kenya, for almost 20 years. WiRED Executive Director Gary Selnow, […]
The WiRED International team completed the first field test of our Community Health Worker (CHW) Training Program this week in Kisumu, Kenya. More than two years in the making, WiRED Executive Director Gary Selnow, Ph.D., said, “The comprehensive content and the delivery aspects of this basic community health worker training program make it the first of its kind anywhere in the world.”
Imagine this: You’re taken seriously ill, have no idea what’s wrong with you, and there isn’t a doctor for 75 miles. Imagine this: You’re pregnant, are having severe headaches and blurred vision, and no one in your village knows what’s wrong with you.