Tanzania to recruit over 150,000 community health workers in three years
The government is planning to recruit 153,385 community health workers in the next three years to strengthen and implement Universal Health Coverage (UHC) successfully.
Dr Wilson Mahela, the Deputy Permanent Secretary in the President's Office Regional Administration and Local Government (PORAG) responsible for Health and Social Welfare Nutrition, said that the government hopes to recruit 51,192 community health workers in each of the next three years.
"We need to strengthen primary health care as more than 85 percent of the population receive health, social welfare, and nutrition services from primary care. So, if we want to implement the UHC, we must first invest in community health workers," he said.
Dr Mahela made the remarks at the closing of a landmark event themed "Strengthening health systems for universal health coverage". He stressed that the theme was timely because PORAG was focusing on primary health care.
"The summit has highlighted the importance of primary health care. We all know that primary health care is the foundation of a strong health system. Our plan is to ensure that each community has two community health workers, if possible, because we have 64,384 hamlets in the country. So we want to ensure that each hamlet has two community workers and one supervisor in each village," he said.
Dr Mahela added that it is important to emphasise and start using community health workers if the government wants to achieve its goal of providing health care to all people at all times and at all ages.
"The issue remains how we are going to make sure that we implement this," he said.
Dr Mahela called on state and non-state actors to support the government in recruiting 153,385 community health workers, as this will require a huge amount of money.
"It is important to strengthen the system there, as it is the first point of contact for most people seeking health care, and it is essential for health promotion and prevention before going for treatment," he said.
"If we strengthen promotion and disease prevention, the number of people going for curative care will be much lower."
Dr Mahela noted that community health workers play a vital role in delivering primary health care services to communities.
"I am glad that the summit has emphasised the importance of investing in community health workers," he said.
Walter Kayombo, the Dar es Salaam Regional Commissioner's office's representative from iCHF Boresha Afya, said that the adoption of digital services in the management of insurance is key to improving primary health care.
He gave the example of the Insurance Management System, which involves registering patients to ease service provision with support from the Health Promotion and System Strengthening (HPSS) project.
"Since then, we have registered a lot of people, and it has been a game changer in managing the insurance, which targets people with low income," he said.
James Kidumba, the HPSS Project Technical Advisor on Health Financing, said that the Tanzania Health Summit has been exceptional this year because it has focused on issues such as community health workers, UHC, and primary health care.
