Kicking AIDS Out

Peter Adoyo serves as a community health worker in the Soweto East community unit. He got his training as a Community Heath Volunteer in 2009 and has since been visiting, advising and helping people in different households about matters health. He currently has 117 households that he visits twice per week and works closely with the community members in holding dialogues on health. In cases where he finds a household with health problems, he does his research before referring the family to Amref Kibera health centre.  He works well in mobilizing women on family planning and links up with the community policy teams to ensure that the homes in the community are conversant with what to do when it comes to health matters and getting help.

Like most CHVs, Peter has participated in a lot of trainings including family planning, mother to child health, gender based violence, HIV education and disease surveillance among others. Peter who deals with a lot of pregnancy cases in the job teaches them about birth plans, why they need to deliver in a health facility and the importance of nutrition. This he does as he educates new mothers on how best to take care of their infants.

Members of this community are faced with harsh weather conditions that bring along with them airborne diseases. These diseases affect mostly children under five and this leads to very many infant ailments in the community. To prevent this, Peter encourages pregnant women and new mothers to sleep under mosquito nets to prevent them from contracting malaria.

Peter and his fellow CHVs take data that helps the government in knowing what the people are lacking so as to put in places strategies to best help the community. At times, this becomes challenging for the CHV because people sometimes become reluctant to give information as they feel that CHVs collect data all the time with no improvement on their status.

Sometimes Peter faces patients who can be difficult to handle. In such cases, he seeks help from a fellow CHV who helps with talking to the patient. “I once had a patient who refused to take her drugs. I had to contact my leader who helped in getting legal ways in helping the patient.” He narrated.