In April, the Burkinabè government recruited 15,000 new community-based health workers to expand community health services in urban areas due to the migration of people from regions with major security challenges. This validates the importance of community-based health services during times of humanitarian and security crises.

They are an addition to the 18,000 existing community-based health workforce. The government trained and equipped them to start work in July. Living Goods will support the development of the costing plan for this important project to serve as a resource mobilization tool.

Additionally, we are in talks with the Ministry of Health and Public Hygiene to concretize plans on how to support the supervision of these CHWs in the coming months. Other partners are supporting the other DESC components, such as compensation.

Meanwhile, operations in our Ziniaré learning site continued to strengthen in Q2 since launching in late 2022. For example, sick child treatments or referrals increased 55% from Q1 to 13 against the progressive target of 15, and pregnancy registrations increased 42% to 2.8 against the progressive target of 2.4.

Drivers include regular supervision and monthly data reviews with the health facilities. DESC elements such as in-stock levels have improved after initiating buffer stock, training health workers in supply management and providing regular monitoring of the available stocks at the CHW level.

The creation of a dashboard has helped improve data access for supervisors, and a memorandum of collaboration with the MoH was updated to provide for quarterly payment of CHWs.

That said, issues with data flow and syncing of CHWs’ digital tools mean that not all data is yet being reported. CHWs are currently manually reporting, which likely understates results. We are working with the MoH and digital partners to address this, but there have been delays in part due to the recent government personnel shifts. We will be seconding staff to support the government digital teams in the next quarter.