Knowledge, Perception and Feasibility of Community Health Influencers, Promoters and Service (CHIPS) Program Among Community Health Workers in Nkanu West and Awgu Local Government Areas, Enugu State, Nigeria

Abstract

Background: Primary health care (PHC) is the bedrock of our National Health Policy. PHC has two components: Community level and Primary health care facility level. Universal Health Cover cannot be achieved without significant investment in the community level component. Hitherto, the community component of PHC remains a neglected area of PHC program. CHIPS, a community-based programme was designed to allow traditional institution to select individuals who will administer basic medical needs and referring people in their communities to designated medical facilities when necessary. Method: This is a cross-sectional descriptive community-based study that was conducted among community health workers in Nkanu West and Awgu Local Government Areas of Enugu State Nigeria using self-administered questionnaire. Convenience sampling technique was used to select community health workers in the two local government areas. Results: 77.4% of the study population were not aware of the program. 26.9% are of the opinion that the families in the communities will welcome the idea of home visits. 23.3% perceived the implementation process to be slow, there was poor community awareness (22.0%), poor community participation (19.3%) and no community mobilization (19.3%) yet. Conclusion: From our study, the response rate on how best to organize CHIPS and the challenges it may face, is low. The striking thing is that the challenges of the past community health workers are still that of the present. So it is of utmost importance to constructively look at the content of the planning, implementation and its evaluation, and then draw strength from the weaknesses of the already existing community health programs.