IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/122391.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The role of community health workers in COVID-19 home-based care: lessons learned from Rwanda

Author

Listed:
  • Kamanzi, Collins
  • Matsiko, Eric
  • Rugema, Lawrence
  • Umubyeyi, Aline
  • Kanya, Lucy

Abstract

Investment in the health system is essential for effective pandemic response: Despite Rwanda’s rapid implementation of control measures to manage the COVID-19 pandemic, the country faced several challenges in the early stages, due to inadequate infrastructure and a shortage of trained staff. A home-based care approach alleviated the facility-based care burden during the pandemic: Implemented in September 2020, this key strategy engaged community health workers (CHWs) to provide health education and monitor patients with mild COVID-19 symptoms. The integration of medical doctors (MDs) into home-based care teams strengthened the COVID-19 response in Rwanda: Operation Save the Neighbour, launched in 2021, integrated MDs into home-based care teams. This improved the quality of care provided to COVID-19 patients, enhanced patient monitoring, and offered additional support to CHWs at household level. The provision of continuous support to CHWs contributed to overcoming challenges in implementing home-based care models: CHWs played a critical role in community mobilization and surveillance. However, they faced significant challenges, including fear, anxiety, and overwhelming workloads. To support these frontline workers, ongoing training and an adequate supply of resources, including personal protective equipment (PPE), are required.

Suggested Citation

  • Kamanzi, Collins & Matsiko, Eric & Rugema, Lawrence & Umubyeyi, Aline & Kanya, Lucy, 2024. "The role of community health workers in COVID-19 home-based care: lessons learned from Rwanda," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 122391, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:122391
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/122391/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Covid-19; coronavirus;

    JEL classification:

    • R14 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Land Use Patterns
    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:122391. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.