Purpose and Benefits of Community Participation in Primary Health Care

Community participation has been defined as the process by which individuals and families assume responsibility to improve their own health through community health development programmes that also benefit communities. Community participation in primary health care therefore ensures the following:

–Sustainability and self-reliance: Individuals get to understand the health problems of their various communities and learn ways to solve them. Community participation ensures that people are more active than passive beneficiaries of government health development programmes. Relationship between communities and health providers also provides an opportunity for them to demand health care supplies from the local government administrations and/or state department of health (Baum et al., 2008a; Currie & Lockett., 2011).

–Management of cultural barriers to healthcare: Community participation in health care recognizes the need for slow integration of conventional solutions to socio-cultural challenges. Community members are not coerced to accept conventional remedies to their health problems, and if the solutions violate local culture, it is discarded and new suitable ideas improvised. However, health providers may need to train community members to help them take the right decisions. It is also the responsibility of health organizations to provide consultations for technical support, explain misconstrued concepts, and provide clear information about the favourable and adverse consequences of these health care interventions (Manion., 2005).

–Stronger bond with the community: Through health education programmes, care providers can build relationships and strong communication with the communities—particularly if services of trained and motivated community health workers are utilized (Hilsenrath., 2012). This assertion is based on the fact that specific health programmes/objectives are conveyed better to the planners (Denis et al., 2001; Baum., 2006b).

–Technical and financial support

Properly sensitized communities are capable of providing labour and even financial resources to facilitate implementation of health programmes (Kalra et al., 2021).

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the easiest and most realistic approach to actualizing community health programmes is to employ services of local health workers for the following reasons. Community health workers (a) provide the first-level contact between individuals and health care systems (b) are easily trained in short time to perform specific tasks and carry out a vast range of activities (c) are indigenes or residents of the communities, thus, they understand the culture and traditions (d) training and re-training of community health workers are the responsibility of the administration. However, when facing a more complicated care scenario or there is need to offer advice on complex problems, community health workers should have direct access to technically trained staff. In this way, better health outcome is achieved (Pollard et al., 2014; Freeman et al., 2016). As a point of reference, Nigeria recognizes the PHC system as the crux of its national health agenda. Primary care is also at the heart of all efforts to achieve universal health coverage (UHC) geared towards transforming population health across the country. But the potentials of health care workers have not been maximized. Rwanda has over 45 000 community health workers serving at the first point of contact between community members and healthcare organizations, hospitals or health centres. Ethiopia also has tens of thousands of health extension workers bringing health care closer to rural communities thereby enabling community members to take control of their health and that of their communities. The well-structured, efficient and responsive primary care framework in Rwanda and Ethiopia has successful met health priorities in both countries—in compliance with WHO global health objectives—and this emphasize the need to modernise healthcare systems and support timely and adequate delivery of essential services such as maternal healthcare and vaccinations (Kim et al., 2016).

2.9 Conclusion

To achieve t, thus, enabling he objectives of global primary health care, there is need to increase supply and availability of medical experts (such as doctors, nurses and well-trained health workers). Broad collaboration between and among doctor, public/private-sector organizations, patients, and enablers of health service delivery (e.g. local manufacturers, supply chains, and technology). These partnerships should be considered a priority due the increasing demand for quality care at the community level and scarcity of community health workers—particularly in Nigeria. Additionally, community participation and a change to more cost-effective model of care should be recognized as other crucial elements of an equitable and rights-based approach to an effective delivery of primary care.

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