.CHILUFYA

By REBECCA MUSHOTA –

DEPUTY Minister of Health Chitalu Chilufya has implored community health assistants to raise levels of awareness of Ebola in neighbourhoods so that the disease is prevented.
Dr Chilufya said this at the graduation ceremony of 285 community health assistants from the Community Health Assistant Training School of Ndola yesterday.
He said that community health workers had an important role of raising awareness on Ebola in society.
“It is important that you sensitise communities on Ebola because once residents in the areas in which you will be working are alert to risk factors, it is easier to prevent the disease from breaking out in Zambia,” he said.
Dr Chilufya said collectively, Ebola could be prevented from breaking out in Zambia.
He said training of community health assistants was one of the ways Government was addressing the human resource challenge in health services.
Community health assistants, Dr Chilufya said, were front line warriors, whose work would help reduce HIV prevalence and malaria, among other problems.
Community health assistants were primary health providers that would sensitise communities on the importance of mosquito nets and early HIV testing which were cardinal tools in disease prevention.
Dr Chilufya said Government was aware that it was cheaper to prevent diseases rather than cure them and that was why it had invested in training community health assistants.
He said Government was grateful to the partners in the training like the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Department for International Development and Zambia State Insurance Corporation.
Ndola Community Heath Assistant Training School principal Alice Nyirenda said the people that were graduating were from 58 districts that came to Ndola in pairs.
The health workers have been trained in nursing, clinical medicine and environmental health.
Ms Nyirenda said the workers would go back to their health posts and provide primary health care which was in line with Government policy to bring medical health close to the family.