Everyone knows health workers are the custodians
of good health practice but this was not the case when I visited Karusandara
Health centre on 5th June 2012.On the first glance at Karusandara Health centre
one get e attracted by the new building of the health facility and the number
of Patients visiting the health facility and the determination of the in charge
Ms. Bonabana Agnes who is busy registering and giving prescription to the
patients. It’s a common phenomenon for one to guess that with the congestion of patients
at the health facility, the drugs would not be enough but thanks to the
government the health centre had enough drugs with only minimal a shortage of pain killers.
It was rather
surprising to find that the district had employed only 4 staff of which only 2
were nurses (a nursing officer and an enrolled nurse only), a health educator
and Askari serving over 36 patients seeking
for services at the health time of the visit. The more shocking answer was that the health
facility had latrine and a bathroom as this would not even come to my
imagination. “A latrine and a bath shelter?” This should not be the case as
health workers are the main advocates for proper sanitation. Words lost meaning
because this was the in charge of the health centre explaining to me and the
team that had visited the health centre to pretest the health Facility
Assessment tool. The efforts of the in charge of the health centre to advocate
for a latrine has been fruitless because
it was not considered in the district budget but has to wait and be considered in the next financial year.
The visit to the health centre was part
of a two days training in policy
analysis organized by RWECO so as to strengthen the capacity of CSOs
(including those of vulnerable groups) to effectively play a watchdog role and
engage the government on key policy issues, to strengthen the knowledge and
skills of ordinary citizens (including the most vulnerable) on social
accountability issues thereby enabling them to influence public policy as
well to strengthen mechanisms for
dialogue and information-sharing on social accountability between CSOs,
citizens and the government with use of innovative ICT. Twenty two participants from RWECO members’
organisations and RWECO- CU participated in the training. The training was
facilitated by Eddie Kayinda of Governance Associates.
By Sheila K
RWECO
RWECO
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