AMREF has been training Village Health Teams (VHTs) in Katine Sub – county as a way of ensuring basic health care can reach the remote villages in which we work. By partnering with community members we ensure that basic diagnosis and treatment can be accessed by other members of the community – who otherwise couldn’t afford to, or wouldn’t choose, to visit other health professionals.
We spoke to Michael Acol, who told us about his life in Katine:
"My name is Acol Michael, aged 27, a resident of Abia village in Katine Sub-county. I am a VHT having been trained by AMREF to carry out various health activities at village level with households.
Our goal is to enhance health seeking behaviours of the community members in Abia and also to introduce an informal information sharing system for planning purposes.
Today, it has been a good day, because we have had a good interaction sharing meeting with AMREF. This shows partnership with the community. We have had a good meeting sharing achievements and challenges
so far, on health, hygiene and sanitation and also water.
I have learnt that there is more to improving service delivery in the area of hygiene, sanitation, health and water. With AMREF, by three years Katine community will be a self reliant community which will be able to render services to the needy.
I have one wife and one child who is a one and half year old boy. I am a boda boda [motor cycle taxi] rider, I earn about one thousand shillings [equivalent to about 30 pence] daily from the boda boda I am operating. This is because I operate in a rural area where people don’t have money to use boda boda transport.
Today I left home at six with my wife and went to the garden. I left the garden at about 8:30 because I had to prepare to come for the meeting. I, however, left my wife to continue with the digging.
The usual time to leave the garden is 11:00. Normally when I come from the garden I get some lunch then get to the boda boda stage, at around two until around six. When I go back home I wait for supper and then go to bed.
What motivates me as a VHT is that I know I am helping my people, instead of them perishing. At the same time, I myself benefit from the knowledge I get. This helps to reduce sickness in my home and the community.
I am now going to have some rest and then continue with data collection. These days are busy collecting data on household sanitation assessment, water and sanitation monitoring and morbidity registration, to find out the exact situation on the ground.
I have a number of challenges; one of them is that some of the people in the community don’t adopt interventions we pass on to them. I also have a challenge of transport to do my work on the ground, but when we get bicycles this will be solved. "