Skills Training for Rural Health Workers

Jamie has been busy developing short lessons for our community’s Rural Health Motivators (RHMs) on a variety of health topics. She presents these lessons to the women during their monthly gathering at Umphakatsi (community grounds), when they come to collect their government pay of about US$40 (that’s a monthly salary). Her upcoming lesson is about nutrition and malnutrition: how to properly identify malnourished children, and how to improve the local diet without spending too much money. She’s made upper-arm measuring bands to check for malnourishment in 1-5 year olds, and this week she’ll distribute them and show the RHMs how to use them.

(poster shows a balanced diet)

Here I am using one the measuring bands on Jamie. If her arm belonged to a 1-5 year old girl, she’d be one healthy kid. No malnourishment detected. Good news!

Jamie has made a lot of health-information posters over the past year or so. They’re on display at the local Clinic, they’re used for these RHM lessons, and they’re displayed at various community spaces and events.

As you can see in these pics, much of the poster information is written in siSwati. This is not an easy thing to do. Jamie writes out what she wants to say in English first, then consults the siSwati dictionary, then consults with friends to get the translation correct. It takes a lot of time, but it’s worth the effort.

poster information: signs and measurements of malnutrition and better food choices with limited money