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August 30, 2024
Tiemtoré Illiassa has served as a Community Health Worker (CHW) in Sougou village, Manga District, for nearly thirty years, dedicating his life to enhancing his community’s wellbeing. This year marked a significant change for Tiemtoré, as Living Goods launched its second learning site in Burkina Faso, following Ziniaré.
CHW Tiemtoré engages with a mother during her child’s pneumonia treatment.
Tiemtoré is one of the 400 CHWs in Manga who received training from Living Goods. These CHWs—called Agents de Santé à base Communautaire (ASBCs) in Burkina Faso—can manage basic childhood diseases, offer family planning counseling, and support pregnant women. “Before, our work was limited to mobilizing women and children for vaccination. But after receiving the training in June, we are empowered to do much more,” Tiemtoré explains.
In addition to health training, the CHWs were given smartphones loaded with the government eCHIS tool and trained on how to use them for diagnosis, treatment, and referral of clients.
“I had never used a smartphone. Now, I can use the app, and that greatly simplifies patient care,” he adds. The smartphone app allows Tiemtoré to closely monitor newborns and provide advice to mothers. “This technology also helps us to assess the severity of children’s illnesses and make quick and effective medical decisions.”
Before Living Goods’ intervention, CHWs in Manga used notebooks to record patient data. Digital tools have simplified their work. “Having digital tools has made patient care easier, more accurate, and more efficient. These new skills benefit not only myself but also my community. I am proud to positively contribute to my community’s health,” he says.
The two learning sites in Ziniaré and Manga are centers of excellence where we innovate and produce evidence to demonstrate impact at a CHW gold standard as we assess whether the enabling environment allows us to start planning scaling through government-led implementation.
Some of the ongoing innovations include the introduction of family planning services and soon a study with the national government to assess CHWs’ ability to deliver integrated community case management (iCCM) interventions within five kilometers of a health facility, which is not the current policy.