Mum’s Magic Hands training goes west as CHV’s in Migori and Kisii undergo training.

The anti COVID-19 war is traversing the country and after sessions in Embu and Meru Counties, the Mum’s Magic Hands teams were in Kisii and Migori working with Community Health Volunteers in a training of trainer’s session to drive the HBCC point home.

Designed to encourage hand washing with soap at key times in emergency affected communities to prevent the spread of diseases, MMH seeks to understand the emotional motivators and barriers to hand washing in emergency contexts, with the aim of developing a behaviour change programme that could be used in any emergency context. Captured in a storyboard, the training sessions describe for the attendees how mothers’ hands can shape the lives of their families and thus the Amref HBCC team uses MMH to train trainers as part of the continuous efforts to reinforce behavior change at community level.

Moses Lengewa a Behaviour Change and social Impact experts from Amref Health Africa said “ these sessions have allowed us to scale the communication much faster as our trainees then cascade ethetrainings within their communities “ . He added the success of this program is also largely due to the support of the county health officials. In each county, we work very closely with the County Health Management teams and the synergies created are powering the success of our interventions and helping both the county governments and CHV’s win the war against Covid-19.

“Indeed collaborative working as opposed to working in silos has proved to be a winning formula” said Liza Kiambi who represented the Migori County Director of Public Health during the trainings. We leverage on our different strengths while also learning from each other allowing us and the respective partners to expedite progress and maximize desired results around proposed interventions.

During the sessions in Kisii and Migori over 1500 CHV’s were trained and they are expected to be instrumental in cascading hand washing knowledge, other COVID-19 interventions and ensuring the curve remains flat.

From Kisii and Migori, the teams move to Homa Bay and Siaya to engage with CHV’s in these counties.

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