This event marked the official launch of the first ever implementation guide to support national governments and their technical and financial partners to develop a functional, continuously maintained, shared and institutionalized CHW master list hosted in a national registry.
As a doctor, I learned more about caring for patients when making home visits with community health workers like Margaret than I did at any other time. I learned that outbreaks start and stop in communities.
PMI plans to be one of the early adopters of the CHW Master List. Let me tell you why: Strengthening the systems that support community health workers is a key part of USAID’s new vision for health systems strengthening 2030 and the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative’s new End Malaria Faster strategy that we released in October.
As part of the PMI strategy we have changed our policy to allow the use of the PMI funds – for the first time – to pay community health workers wherever countries create policies and plans to employ them. Abolishing the pay gap for community health workers isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do. As we explain in PMI’s new guidance today the evidence is clear: for every $1 we invest in paying, training and equipping community health workers $10 is returned to society in the form of extended life years, outbreaks prevented, and jobs created. This isn’t a cost, it’s an investment with a high return.
But PMI and our partner countries can’t pay these workers if we don’t know where they are, who they are, or where they work. So I want to thank Global Fund, colleagues from Kenya, Zambia and Mali, and the partners who’ve developed and are using the CHW master list to develop a national registry of community health workers.
This implementation guidance for CHW master lists and registries provides an excellent roadmap for putting the necessary systems in place and to track our progress. In fact, we have shared this guidance with our PMI field teams.
The world has counted on community health workers to extend primary health care and to help fight epidemics — from malaria and HIV/AIDS to ebola and COVID-19. But while we’ve counted on community health workers, we can do better at counting them.