Services improved in the health sector as a result of Advocacy forums and rural debate/magazine

 In the month of May 2017 ToroDev supported Harugongo community development forum to go and monitor services in health, education and agriculture sector to find out the status of service delivery in those sector.

“The rural debate held in  May 2017  by ToroDev has caused a positive change in the health sector, during the rural debate citizens raised the issue of late coming of heath workers at Nyantaboma health centre III and we are happy duty bearers heard the voices and intervened. When we went back for a follow up in June we had an interview with patients and they acknowledged that nurses this time  come early at 8 am and leave in the evening and attributed this to the rural debates which a wakened  them”. Said Musinguzi Abdul the coordinator of Harugongo community development forum during the follow up field exercise.

A health worker attending to people  seeking health services

Abdul added during the follow up exercise I checked registers and observed that health workers are reporting early and signing out late in the evening compared to those days when citizens were complaining about absenteeism & late coming, this is a change since citizens reported them during rural debates.

“Another issue that was raised during the rural radio debate was health workers harassing and mistreating the patients and we are happy that things are different now because nurses were warned by the In-charge after the voices were amplified live on radio, that captured the attention of  duty bearers. We are happy to report  when we asked the patients during the field exercise  it was confirmed that health worker attitude has changed, now the way they are handling patients  has changed whereby they talk to patients and build that patient doctor relationship and this has increased the number of patients accessing the facility to get medication.” Said Mutegeki Robert member of Harugongo community development forum during the follow up field exercise.

Robert added we were hosted on radio in the month of March 2017 and complained to leaders to inspect homes to find out those with no latrines and we are happy that leaders got concerned and started inspecting home and those homes that had no pit latrines were warned and given a shorter time to have latrines or they will be arrested, we are happy that   many homes that didn’t have pit latrines have constructed them and we credit this to our efforts and ICT tools because information is always disseminated and accessed through those channels like radio stations.

During the monitoring field exercise we discovered the following challenges limited information flow especially at the health centre, VHT are no longer active and yet they are the first people who can give out first aid, poor documenting and record keeping at Nyantaboma health centre III and as a forum we have decided to sensitize the community on radio and community meetings.

ToroDev partners with 21 advocacy forums located in different sub counties in 5 districts of Rwenzori Sub region. The 21 advocacy forums have been formed by the 120 rural monitors who have been trained by ToroDev since August, 2012 in online advocacy, monitoring service delivery using online social media/ICT tools like Ushahidi platform online & offline documentation, visualization and mapping.

 The Advocacy Forums also use FM Radio Broadcasting as an ICT tool for “convergence or hub” since it is the most accessed media channel in the rural areas of the Rwenzori Region.

We thank SIDA, NED, SPIDER, CIPESA, & all our development partners for the support to improve service delivery in our communities.