Govt, partners move to address HAS-patient ratio
Minister of Health Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda says it has partnered with various organizations to reduce the health surveillance assistant (HSA)-patient ratio from 1, 600 to 1, 000 patients against one HSA as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Chiponda made the sentiments in Lilongwe on Thursday during the graduation ceremony of 110 Disease Control and Surveillance Assistants (DC&SAs) who have been trained with financial support from the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR) and other partners.
The minister said, in collaboration with its partners, her ministry has intensified efforts to train community healthcare workers, including the graduating DC&SAs, to reduce the gaps that exist in the provision of healthcare services.
Chiponda said this is in line with the National Community Health Strategy, which aims at addressing critical challenges such as access to healthcare services, especially to communities residing in hard-to-reach areas, shortage of community health workers such as HSAs, lack of community health infrastructure such as health posts and units for health workers.
“Community health workers play a significant role in connecting the rural masses to national health delivery system. Community health, as a community based primary care, is therefore an integral component in the overall delivery system and HSAs remain key to the delivery of health services to rural households,” she said.
The minister stated that for the past five years, the government has recruited over 3, 000 additional HSAs, making the total number of HSAs to 12, 000.
However, Chiponda admitted that there is still a long way to go for the government to achieve the WHO recommended ratio of one HSA to one 1, 000.
She, therefore, commended PEPFAR and other partners for providing resources for the training of the 110 DC&SAs who will be deployed to public health facilities across the country.
Director of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Global Health Consortium (HBCUGHC) at Morehouse School of Medicine, Nikita Toppin Dera, said her organization expects the graduands to contribute towards the delivery of quality healthcare in rural settings.
Dera also pledged that her organization would continue assisting the Government of Malawi to improve healthcare services across the country.
