Lodwar – August 11, 2025 (Public Communication and Media Relations)
The Department for Health and Sanitation and Members of County Assembly met with the Amref Health Africa team to understand how to utilize community scorecard.
The purpose of this meeting was to identify strategies to elevate community health interventions across medical facilities through enforcing accountability and transparency via the community scorecard.
This project will be implemented by the county and sub-county health management teams in collaboration with Amref Health Africa and Africa Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA).
Funded by Danida, this project seeks to enhance social accountability and bridge the existing gaps in health through the following; assess service provision at health facilities, empower community engagement, improve responsiveness to community health needs, address stock outages, and enhance emergency / referral services.
Speaking at the meeting, Deputy County Secretary Joseph Nyanga termed the community health service scorecard an assessment tool that will reinforce social accountability and transparency in service delivery. He added that this will ensure timely response to community needs, further improving health indicators.
‘’Its prudent for the county to increase the number of community health committees and the CHPs in order to ensure services are monitored at the community level,’’ he said.
County Chief Officer Janerose Tioko reiterated that the community scorecard will empower community ownership of health services delivered, “This will increase community engagement and ensure services have reached the people of Turkana,”
She also shared that there is an urge to strengthen community strategies such as spot-check supervisions that will enable healthcare facilities to assess critical health services, refining health indicators in the community.
“The community scorecard will also act as a tool to mobilize local resources for supporting health interventions,” she added.
Chairperson Health Committee, County Assembly of Turkana, Bethwel Kobong’in, called for strengthening of health indicators, including sanitation and hygiene across health facilities, intensifying evaluation of commodity stock, and improving emergency-referral services.
Echoing the DCS, he added that it is important to conduct sensitization training on community scorecard targeting Community Health Committees, Community Health Assistants, and Community Health Promoters to enhance understanding on how to improve community structures.
‘’In as much as we are strengthening health infrastructure, we need also to fully focus on ameliorating services at health services and maintain seamless provision of health services,” he said.
Director for Community Health Services, Dr Joseph Lolepo said that with support from county government, Amref Health Africa, and Danida, the program has trained and sensitized over 25 community health committees in Turkana West to monitor and evaluate health services delivery by ensuring uninterrupted dissemination of medical services.
This meeting will be followed up by a sensitization meeting for Sub-county health management teams.
Present Members of the County Assembly were Hon Sarah Abdi and Hon Hellen Kaile (Nominated), and Linus Echemee (Kalapata).
Seniors officers and directors from the County Health Management Team, the County Assembly of Turkana, and the directorate of resource mobilisation, partnership coordination, and donor relations, as well as the national Ministry of Health, and representatives from AMREF Health Africa were also present.
