Mobilizing FCHVs (Female Community Health Volunteers)

Female Community Health Volunteers have been working as frontline health workers in remote villages for decades.  The major role of the FCHV is to advocate healthy behaviors of mothers and community to promote safe motherhood, child health, family planning, and other community based health promotion and service delivery. During this pandemic, only FCHVs could reach out to pregnant and new mothers door to door, hence we worked closely with them. Through workshops we did an informative session on maternal health and COVID-19 safety awareness. The workshops were joined by 20-25 women in each health post. Over the months, late 2020 to early 2021, the FCHVs walked uphill and downhill to encourage local women to visit health posts for any medical emergencies and as well as for child birth.  They have been acting as a linkage between the health facility and the community and providing referral services especially for maternal and newborn services.Hamro Palo also extended support for transportation should they require financial assistance.  During our interactions, the FCHVs shared how lack of proper infrastructure and geographical difficulty as well as inadequate equipment at the health facility have made it difficult for people to access basic health facilities. They further shared the health issues women are facing in the villages including difficulty during pregnancies, managing menstrual health and hygiene and compulsion to travel to urban hospitals for better services.