Despite real progress, child mortality in Burkina Faso remains very high due to poor access to health services, especially in rural areas. Community-based health workers (CBHWs), who are supposed to offer initial advice and health care to people living far from health centres, are poorly equipped and their services are often of poor quality.
The authorities have adopted the Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (PCIME) strategy, which is implemented at the community level by CBHWs. They need to be trained and supervised regularly, but due to lack of resources, this is not always the case.
The project is supporting the Ministry of Health’s IT services in the development and deployment of two complementary digital applications embedded on the telephones of community-based health workers (CBHWs): a module for managing/receiving text and voice message campaigns and an e-learning module for self-training purposes.
The aim was to set up a continuous training system for the 17,000 CBHWs, by providing 300 key SMS messages to them and the essential knowledge required for their work.
Furthermore, multimedia training content have been produced and distributed through this system.
- 322 staff members were trained at central level, in the regions and in the 2 intervention Health Districts
- 654 training content text messages were sent to ASBCs
