The COVID-19 Action Fund for Africa (CAF-Africa) has partnered with Living Goods and Lwala Community Alliance to mobilize donations of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) that will be channeled through the Council of Governors to benefit approximately 100,000 Community Health Workers (CHWs) across all 47 counties. On 27 th April 2021, The Council of Governors together with the two nonprofits will officially launch the distribution of KES 100 million PPE consignment of 10,928,000 face masks and 164,000 face shields that is expected to be utilized by community health workers over a period of three-months.
CAF-Africa is a consortium of non-profit organizations working globally to protect Community Health Workers (CHWs) on the frontlines of Africa’s COVID-19 response. This partnership will enable CHWs across Kenya to save lives and promote positive health outcomes by continuing to safely deliver essential preventive, promotive, curative and pandemic response services to households. The initiative responds to the growing and urgent need to protect community health workers globally, who despite offering critical primary health services, are not always adequately equipped, compensated, or integrated into the formal health workforce. Although there’s a global shortage of PPE, low-and-middle income countries like Kenya are often disproportionately affected. CAF-Africa is changing this status quo, by partnering with governments and local stakeholders across Sub-Saharan Africa to provide PPE to more than 1 million CHWs who serve more than 400 million people across the continent. This donation is part of this continental effort.
Studies show that investment in community health yields a return of up to KES 9.4 in economic and societal benefits for every shilling invested. “CHWs are the backbone of the health system bridging access barriers by bringing essential services closer to the people”. This initiative affirms our commitment as county governments to invest in our community health workforces and ensure that their sacrifice in supporting health delivery, COVID-19 response and UHC attainment do not come at undue personal risk.”
As the in-country partners of CAF-Africa, Living Goods and Lwala Community Alliance have supported the PPE quantification, mobilization and coordination process and will provide logistical support in the distribution of the consignment. The two non-profits work with national and county governments in Kenya to strengthen community health systems and have been providing ongoing technical, operational and financial support for COVID-19 response since the outbreak of the pandemic.
Communities have untapped potential to solve the world’s most pressing challenges. Sustenance of community-led healthcare through provision of adequate PPEs to CHWs is critical. COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented disruptions in provision of essential health services. Now, more than ever, there is an urgent need to protect CHWs so that they can continue to provide essential services to households while remaining safe and secure.
That is why Living Goods, Lwala Community Alliance and other like-minded organizations continue to advocate for concerted, government-led efforts to integrate CHWs into the health workforce and adopt enabling legislation to institutionalize community health investments. Such investments include training, compensation, supervision, and equipping CHWs with health commodities, essential medicines and digital tools. CHWs should also be included in PPE quantifications and COVID-19 vaccination programs as part of the frontline health workforce. We applaud Kenya government’s efforts in moving forward some of these critical elements of community health. We call for additional investments towards the same. As a country, we have recognized community health as the pathway to UHC. Increased investment in community health is not only desirable but a necessary precondition to achieving UHC. County governments through the Council of Governors have a significant role to play towards these efforts. CAF-Africa’s collaborative effort to address the unmet need for COVID-19 related supplies for community health workers has so far resulted in the delivery of over 66 million PPE to more than 470,000 CHWs in 24 African countries against an estimated need of over 203,000,000 PPE. The consortium of over 30 member organizations will continue to work with governments from the 24 African countries to help pool resources to deliver PPEs to the 1 million CHWs at the frontlines of COVID-19 response in the continent.
About the COVID-19 Action Fund for Africa
The COVID-19 Action Fund for Africa (CAF-Africa) is an award-winning collaborative of 30+organizations dedicated to providing personal protective equipment (PPE) to Community Health Workers (CHWs) on the frontlines of Africa’s COVID-19 response, including CHWs in Kenya. CAF-Africa is organized by and draws on the diverse expertise of its non-profit partners: Community Health Acceleration Partnership, Direct Relief, the Pandemic Action Network, and the Community Health Impact Coalition and its member organizations including Integrate Health, Last Mile Health, Living Goods, Lwala Community Alliance, Muso, Partners in Health, Pivot, and VillageReach.
For more information, visit www.cafafrica.org.
About Council of Governors
The Council of County Governors (COG) is a non-partisan organization established under Section 19 of the Intergovernmental Relations Act (IGRA 2012). The Council of Governors comprises the Governors of the forty-seven Counties. main functions are the promotion of visionary leadership; sharing of best practices and; offer a collective voice on policy issues; promote inter – county consultations; encourage and initiate information sharing on the performance of County Governments with regard to the execution of their functions; collective consultation on matters of interest to County Governments.
For more information: https://www.cog.go.ke/ @KenyaGovernors
About Lwala Community Alliance
Lwala Community Alliance is a Kenyan founded organization that believes that communities have the untapped potential to solve the world’s most pressing health challenges. Our health systems work focuses on empowering community health workers (CHWs) and communities to meaningfully engage in policy processes. We work with the Ministry of Health and partners to professionalize community health workers who support the health system, transform health outcomes and deliver lasting change.
For more information: https://lwala.org/ Twitter @LwalaCommunity
About Living Goods
Living Goods is a non-profit organization that saves lives at scale by supporting digitally empowered community health workers (CHWs) who deliver care on call—making it easy for families in need to get the care they need. Beginning its operations in Uganda in 2007 and expanding into Kenya in 2015, Living Goods works with governments and partners to ensure community health workers have access to the digital technology, medical treatments, supervision and compensation to cost- effectively deliver high quality, impactful health services.
For more information: https://livinggoods.org/ Twitter @Living_Goods
Media Contacts
Yvonne Ogwang’, Council of Governors: yvonne.ogwang@cog.go.ke
Lindah Akoth, Lwala Community Alliance: lindah@lwalacommunityalliance.org
Clara Kakai, Living Goods: ckakai@livinggoods.org