Training program for female community volunteers to combat COVID 19 in rural Nepal

• Main Authors: Ramu Kharel (Author), Soniya P. Regmi (Author), Timmy Lin (Author), Adam C. Levine (Author), Adam R. Aluisio (Author)
• Format: Book
• Published: Taylor & Francis Group, 2022-12-01T00:00:00Z.
• Subjects: article
• Online Access: Connect to this object online.
• Notes: 1654-9880; 10.1080/16549716.2022.2134425
• Keywords: education; rural nepal; international education; community education; covid 19; Public aspects of medicine; RA1-1270
• Source: Global Health Action, Vol 15, Iss 1 (2022)

Female Community Health Volunteers (FCHV) in Nepal have identified lack of appropriate training as a barrier to involvement in the COVID 19 response. With more than 50,000 FCHVs serving rural areas of Nepal, they are instrumental in healthcare and are a major source of information delivery to those with the most limited health-care access in Nepal. This communication describes an innovative training programme to rapidly equip FCHVs with knowledge on COVID 19 response. The ongoing programme leverages partnerships between local municipalities and a local community-based organisation and has rapidly trained more than 300 FCHVs across four districts with a population of 1,000,000, and has plans to expand the training across the country. This training programme is a key example of how local partnerships can be utilised for digital training of FCHVs in remote parts of Nepal and leveraged to strengthen response capacity during the pandemic.