Community Health and Batwa
Kuule, a psychiatrist conducting a sensitisation setion in one of the community outreaches
Our goal is an effective and efficient Health promotion and disease prevention through Health education.
Our services
We serve over 70,000 people in approximately 17,023 house holds while working with 525 Village Health volunteers, including 23 from batwa settlements,. The VHTs are distributed in 101 villages in four sub-counties of Kayonza, Mpungu, Kanyantorogo and Butogota Town Council. Last year, the team was able to carry most of the planned activities with major successes registered in; mental health, Expanded Program on Immunization, School health & Child to Child program and Maternal Health Program including family planning. we are using mobile and digital technology using SMS messaging to further improve Maternal and child health, promote health insurance, health rights awareness. This was accepted as a world class innovation and awarded funding for developing this platform that we are testing now.
We are near controlling Malaria incidence within our catchment area (malaria prevalence is at <7%) compared to 19% within the region. The prevalence of malaria was 45% in 2008.
Malnutrition has been controlled in BCH catchment area now at <1% compared to the national prevalence at 11%. The prevalence of malnutrition was 20% in 2008.
Facility Based deliveries increased from 65% in 2013 to 95% in 2019. This is higher than the national statistic of 70% at National level.
Under-5 mortality reduced by 68% from 115 to per 1000 live births to 36 per 1000 live births (2018) compared to the National rate of 64 per 1000.
We are piloting mobile-based interventions for health education aimed at improving referral and to providing real-time interventions in the communities. 73,000 people will benefit through this intervention.
All the Batwa settlements (14 settlements) are visited every month with focus on Batwa Nutrition screening and rehabilitation, malaria sensitization, de-worming and Vitamin A Supplementation, Sanitation and Hygiene, Alcohol Rehabilitation, HIV Prevention and Batwa are members of the Community Health Committee. 890 Batwa benefit through this outreach program.
Some of our interventions have been shared in scientific journals for wider dissemination.
Implementing the Alcoholics Anonymous program within the catchment area. 4 active AA meetings are supported by the department.
We are supporting more than 2500 people with mental health needs within BCH catchment area through the community based mental health program. 20 outreaches are conducted every month to reach out to these clients.
We started the AA groups and have so far established 47 livelihood programs in the 16 parishes within BCH catchment area.