Introduction and Follow Up of Ongoing WiRED International Program

Abstract

As we write this article, the expanding coronavirus pandemic has crushed healthcare systems around the world. Increasingly, ministries of health, non-governmental organizations and hospitals are turning to their reserve workforces — retired professionals, medical and nursing students, and community health workers (CHWs). In under-resourced regions, where the options are limited, they are reaching out to these CHWs, a quasi-professional corps of people who play a critical role in the last mile of many health systems. This trained force delivers basic health services, provides community members with health and prevention information, and becomes the eyes and ears for the official healthcare systems. The need for CHWs has surged along with the onset of the coronavirus, but CHWs, like everyone in the healthcare system, are in short supply. The CHW training program that we describe in this paper started out with a different set of motivations and a very different timetable. The coronavirus crisis has imposed changes on our training protocols and greatly accelerated the need for CHWs in all regions, but especially, underserved regions. In this paper we describe our plans and approaches developed in a very different global environment. At the end, we speculate about how this program will unfold now that training procedures must change, and how CHWs have become ever more important in community health.