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 is 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 will be produced and distributed through this system.
The project’s activities contribute to reaching following results:
1)Deploy a digital distance learning system for the CBHWs, incorporating content validated by the Ministry of Health;
2)Familiarise the Ministry of Health’s teams with the tool and train them in order to continue distance learning activities;
3)Reinforce the knowledge and practices of the CBHWs trained and supported by the digital system.
