CHE strategy is broadly aimed toward the whole community. This is done by training local villagers to share spiritual, physical, emotional, and social truths with their fellow villagers.
The CHE strategy includes the following primary characteristics:
*** Concentration on meeting priority needs keenly felt by the village through simple community projects. These projects are designed to empower the villagers to do as much as possible on their own. We attempt to begin at the ability level of the people in relation to their leadership, initiative, and self-reliance.
*** An integration of preventive medicine, health education, and sometimes curative care, into a total program. The emphasis is on prevention and education with expected results in changed lifestyles and conditions.
*** A vision and goal to reach the most people as possible.
*** A program of instruction that shows the people how they can participate in their own development. Lessons are developed that are aimed at simple health education, identification of major diseases, recognition of the need for medical care, and care of the sick (especially children).
*** Community self-help and community leadership emanating from the peoples’ commitment to the program.
*** A commitment to delegate most of the tasks to local church leaders, community leaders, and the CHEs, who can best generate local support and commitment for the program.
*** An understanding that the content of the training must be transferable and multipliable.
*** A commitment to use readily available local resources as much as possible.
*** Provision for good working relationships with the nearest available hospital for necessary obstetrical, surgical, and medical care of severely ill patients.
*** Mass inoculation programs for measles, BCG, DPT, and polio. Such programs should be community sponsored.
*** Provision for sanitation training with an emphasis on cleanliness, safe water, and proper use of pit latrines.
*** Provision for easily accessible family planning instruction materials. An underlying foundation for a CHE Program is that the community sees a project as its own. Too many times outside organizations do something for the people, leave, and what had been accomplished disintegrates. The emphasis from the beginning must be on the community taking ownership.
I am on board with the concept of CHE but I think the idea of mass inoculation is bad science. What is needed to fight disease is nutrition, not infection.
Jon Frank
*** Mass inoculation programs for measles, BCG, DPT, and polio. Such programs should be community sponsored.