I have now completed six months holed up here in Kyangwali Refugee Camp doing primary health care activities at my placement organization, Action Africa Help International (AAHI). I came here in August 2013 as a Global Health Corps Fellow to serve as a Health Officer with AAHI under its refugee care program. AAH-I is an African-led, international non-governmental organisation, based in Nairobi, Kenya, that supports livelihood-challenged communities in East and Southern Africa to sustainably improve their well-being and standard of living. With Country Programmes in Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Uganda, and Zambia, AAH-I has over 20 years’ experience working with communities in conflict and post-conflict situations, including refugees, internally displaced people and host communities. More recently it has expanded its activities to work with other marginalized communities including pastoralists and urban slum dwellers.
Under the organization’s refugee care program, AAHI is an implementing partner with the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR) to provide basic primary health care services to the refugees in Kyangwali refugee settlement camp. My key area of interest as a Health Officer in Kyangwali refugee camp is community health promotion because it forms the axis of disease prevention in any society. AHHI’s community health promotion approach involves the creation of community-based structures namely the community health volunteers, the safe motherhood promoters, and the women-to-women groups.
The community health volunteers are charged with all disease prevention duties in the community, safe motherhood promoters are charged with a duty of promoting the uptake and utilization of maternal and child health care services in the settlement camp, whereas the women-to-women groups are basically charged with a duty of promoting basic hygienic practices in households of refugees. The safe motherhood promoters and women-to-women groups are made up of passionate ladies who work tirelessly to promote basic community health practices to peers in the refugee camp.
The women’s role in refugee households has always been along the same lines of bearing and raising the family while taking care of their needs. If one of the children got sick, it was the responsibly of the females in the household to take care of the illness, the males culturally have no part in the hands-on caring process since this is the woman’s job. However if the women are part of the healing process shouldn’t they be a part of the prevention process as well? That exact idea was the spark that ignited the idea for the Women-to-Women’s groups, and the safe motherhood promoters. If women have to take care of the family then they need to be the ones to help prevent the disease, parasites, and pests. Fortunately for the women in the refugee camp, the men have accepted the women’s role as key player in community health promotion work in the refugee camp. Though the men in the refugee camp only small roles for women, it is a great epoch for their future generations – where men and women and women are allowed to play equal roles in the creation of a disease free community.
The Women-to-Women groups, and safe motherhood promoters in Kyangwali refugee camp are not only a group of health educators and disease preventers, but they are also pioneers of transformative healthy behaviors . These trail blazers are brave enough to start fighting the old cultural norms and break down the social stigmas of their people, all while helping to educate and protect their families and neighbors. This inspiring group of women preform a very important duty in this settlement camp, but the most inspiring quality about all of these women is that they do not want to stop here. They wish to go one step further and learn farming, tailoring, and other trades from AAHI so they can have more to teach to their community and prosper all together.
Finally I have seen a lot of improvements in the community health situation where these women operate, and now we are proposing the adaptation of increased women presence on the community health structures of the host community, so that the same community health outcomes are realized in the host community.