Perception of Beneficiaries and Stakeholders about the Services Offered by Health Huts Put in Place by the Health Project—Community Health of USAID in the Goudomp Health District (Senegal)

Abstract

The Health Project—Community Health USAID is a community-based intervention that has been implemented by a group of NGOs, among which there is Africare, for a period of 5 years (2006-2011). It seeks to strengthen the community health system through a package of basic services offered at the health center, and as well as to improve the skills and knowledge of community actors. The main objective of this study is to capture the perceptions of beneficiaries and stakeholders about the services offered at the PSSC health posts located in the health district Goudomp. A qualitative cross-sectional study on the perception of the community of the USAID PSSC and quality of services offered by the health huts was conducted from the 2nd to 5th of May 2009 in the Goudomp health district. To achieve the objectives of this study, we conducted focus group discussions with all the community leaders and had individual interviews with the community health workers (CHWs) and the supervisor of the NGO Africare. From most of the discussions, it can be concluded that the activities of the health hut are not well known by the populations. The best known activities are those performed by the nurse: immunization and prenatal care. The existence of health huts at the community level was considered beneficial by all the community leaders. For the majority of the participants to the focus group discussions, the health huts “provided access to basic care”. Some participants, however, pointed out the “frequent drugs shortages” which, according to them, would explain the low attendance of the health huts in favor of the health post. The majority of CHWs and matrons felt that supervision activities were done on a regular basis. During the interviews, they mentioned many difficulties. However, the most common problem is the fact that the CHWs and the matron “who have no other source of income” were not salaried workers. This assessment has identified some difficulties in the implementation of the PSSC in the Goudomp health district. In order to solve the problems one would necessarily have to initiate a dialogue between the community and other stakeholders (health district, Africare, Local Government and CHWs).