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Owoko S.1, Vele A.1, Nijsten D.2, Ponzo Dieu - de Pundert M.2
1Kisumu Medical and Educational Trust Foundation (KMET), Kisumu, Kenya, 2Impact Investment to Support Access to Health Foundation (IISAH Foundation), Amsterdam, Netherlands
Background: IISAH Foundation and KMET are executing a 12-month pilot project, known as Fisio Rehab-project (FRP), providing affordable loans and technical assistance to five privately-owned physiotherapy clinics in Southwestern Kenya to improve quality and accessibility of physiotherapy services in underserved communities. One of the main factors contributing to the low uptake of physiotherapy services in these communities is the lack of knowledge and awareness of physiotherapy services.
Purpose: To improve awareness and access to physiotherapy services community health volunteers (CHVs) were deployed to reach underserved clients and create awareness of physiotherapy services in Kisumu and Kisii county.
Methods: Working with the Ministry of Health (MOH), the project identified and selected ten community health volunteers (CHV), already working on the governments community health strategy, to be attached to each of the facilities for awareness creation and client mobilization. These CHVs received training on common physiotherapy conditions, provision of simple exercises, and how to use data collection tools. The CHVs were also trained on identifying home-based care clients and linking them with the physiotherapists care.
Results: A total of ten CHVs participate in FRP. They conduct awareness creation sessions at different sites such as hospitals, churches, schools, door-to-door, barazas (public meetings chaired by local administration), youth groups and other community meetings. The community members help the CHVs to identify clients in the community who are in need for physiotherapy services. During the first six months of the FRP a total of 521 potential clients were identified, of which 376 (72.0%) with a physical disability, 76 (14.6%) with sensory loss, 22 (4.2%) with multiple disabilities, and 47 (9.0%) with other disabilities. The main activities done by the CHVs included counseling of the client (364, 69,9%), counseling of the caretaker (419, 80.4%)and the provision of simple exercises (284, 54.4%). A total of 238 (45.7%) patients where referred for physiotherapy services and 67 (12.9%) clients received home-based rehabilitation care given by the CHV under supervision of one of the attached physiotherapy facilities.
Conclusion(s): Trained CHVs in Southwestern Kenya are capable of reaching communities that are underserved with regard to physiotherapy services. They create awareness in these communities and they refer clients to physiotherapy clinics, improving accessibility of physiotherapy services.
Implications: The use of trained CHVs can be replicated to others physiotherapy clinics in Southwestern Kenya to improve awareness and accessibility of physiotherapy services in underserved communities.
Funding acknowledgements: IISAH Foundation
Topic: Globalisation: health systems, policies & strategies
Ethics approval: No ethical approval was required
All authors, affiliations and abstracts have been published as submitted.
