Celebrating health workers at the frontlines - in pictures

Community Health Workers often serve the most vulnerable populations in the hardest to reach communities. In Uganda, Malaria Consortium has trained over 7,000 Community Health Workers, known as Village Health Team (VHT) volunteers. Solomon Spaya is one of them.

To celebrate these often unpaid, lifesaving members of the community, we are sharing with you the story of one volunteer health worker in rural Uganda. Share Solomon’s story and help us to raise awareness of the critical work that people like Solomon undertake and the challenges that they overcome in order to deliver life-saving health care and health education around the world.

"The number of deaths in children under five has gone down a lot. I know this, because as a parish co-ordinator I always hear what is going on in the community. I would hear that such and such child had died, or listen to the radio announcements and find out that this woman’s baby had died," says Solomon

Since Susanne has a cough, Solomon uses his timer and assesses her respiratory rate. This allows him to check for pneumonia. Susanne’s breathing rate is under 40 breaths per minute, therefore Solomon does not have to provide antibiotics.

Susanne’s malaria test is negative and Solomon explains the result to Rose and why Susanne needs to be referred to the nearest health centre for further examinations.

Solomon uses his training and follows the instruction manual, first assessing Susanne for fever.

7 miles away at the closest health centre, Solomon restocks on drugs and supplies from his trainer and supervisor, Christine. "We used to be overloaded, I used to see about 70 patients per day. Now I barely see sick children: sometimes only three per day," she says.

When not busy with patients or his health promotion tasks, Solomon can be found on his land, the only source of income for his family. He grows pineapple, pumpkins, beans, cassava and matoke (cooking bananas).

In addition to receiving patients in his home, Solomon also performs home visits and gives basic health promotion, sharing the village health team bicycle with his fellow village health team volunteers.

He also likes to spend some time talking with his friends in the nearby trading centre. The community is satisfied with the services provided by their village health team. Drugs for all children under five years are free of charge, and proximity to a village health team makes a big difference.

Being a Village Health Team volunteer (VHT) is an unpaid position, yet Solomon takes great pride in his work. Malaria Consortium trains VHTs like Solomon in integrated community case management of childhood fever. Through Malaria Consortium’s inScale project, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Fou

"The number of deaths in children under five has gone down a lot. I know this, because as a Parish Coordinator I always hear what is going on in the community. I would hear that such and such child had died, or listen to the radio announcements and find out that this woman’s baby had died," says Sol

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Photographs: Tine Frank/Malaria Consortium