One Million Community Health Workers

Today marks one-year since the launch of the One Million Community Health Workers (1mCHW) Campaign! We have lots to celebrate as we continue to mobilize support for the integration of professionally trained community health workers (CHWs) into national health workforces in sub-Saharan Africa. Here are some highlights of the year:

Ten countries have requested support from the Campaign to engage in developing national CHW plans. We have been working closely with the Liberian government, including President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, on the design and costing of CHW scale-up. We are aligning with a strong group of in-country partners, including Tiyatien Health, CHAI, RBHS Liberia, UNICEF, USAID, Canadian Red Cross, the Liberian Red Cross and Samaritan’s Purse to make the goal of 10,000 gCHVs (Liberia’s equivalent of CHW) a reality.

In Nigeria, the Campaign is providing technical support to the National Primary Health Care Development Agency as Nigeria looks to coordinate and harmonize the scale-up of approximately 150,000 village health workers (VHWs), Nigeria’s equivalent of CHWs. We have also made great strides in Malawi as we work with UNICEF, USAID, WHO and JSI to identify gaps in HSAs, Malawi’s equivalent of CHWs, coverage at the national level.

November 2013 marked the unveiling of the Campaign’s Operations Room. The Operations Room is a map that conveys data on CHW operations, capabilities, workforce analytics and population demographics. This year, we will be building a close partnership with Intrahealth, a leading NGO addressing informational challenges facing the global health workforce, to adapt their human resource management platform to register CHWs more systematically in sub-Saharan Africa.

CHW recognition is at the heart of our work and we are delighted to celebrate Roseline Nuhu (a CHW from the Millennium Village Project in Pampaida, Nigeria) who is a winner of this year’s REAL Awards! The REAL awards, given by Save the Children and the Frontline Health Workers Coalition, is an awards program that recognizes health workers and the important life saving work that they do every day.

As we embrace the year to come, we look forward to even greater momentum. Stay connected with our work through our website, blog and social media and show your support for frontline health workers – let’s make them count!