Since 2018, Ms Miriam Namayi, a Community Health Promoter (CHP) has served her people in Kitui County raising awareness on primary health care.
One of her key focus areas is tracking down and referral of tuberculosis patients to hospital for early interventions.
While she has never been infected by the bacterial infection, Ms Namayi is motivated to serve her community due to the pain she has seen the TB patients go through.
The CHP attached to Kitui County Teaching and Referral Hospital says one of her major roles is to identify patients displaying symptoms similar to TB and refer them to the health facility for screening.
Identifying the patients, she says, has been made possible by the fact that she has gone through a rigorous training as a TB champion.
“Through the training, we were made to understand a range of signs and symptoms of TB,” says Ms Namayi.
The CHP says at the beginning, one of her biggest challenges was creating awareness among members of the public that TB could infect anyone.
She further explains that the villagers also found it hard to believe that the infectious disease could be passed down to children.
“I have made my community aware that TB is treatable while those infected cannot transmit the bacteria once they are on drugs,” She adds “I am glad to say that my community is now aware that no one is immune to the airborne disease,”.
One of the CHPs most memorable moments is when she identified and linked a nine-month-old TB patient to a health facility for treatment.
Ms Namayi says she identified the child during a church service. She was coughing and crying the better part of the service.
The following day, she tracked down the child’s grandmother, also her guardian, eager to know if the child had received any medical attention.
The grandmother informed Ms Namayi that the baby had been diagnosed with malaria and was under medication.
The CHP was also informed that the child had been separated from her mother who works in Nairobi.
When perusing through the baby’s routine clinic book, Ms Namayi realized her weight was way below what is expected at her age.
“I was informed that the baby could barely eat, whenever she tried to swallow anything, she would vomit,” says Ms Namayi.
Concerned about the baby’s health, she advised the guardian to take her to the hospital but she had initially declined.
The baby’s grandmother informed Ms Namayi that she was on her way to attend a menial job for income generation purposes. She says, was to remain at home sleeping under a tree until she came back later in the day.
“I managed to convince her and even promised to settle the transport fee to the hospital and back,” says Ms Namayi.
At the Kitui County Teaching and Referral Hospital, the baby was tested for tuberculosis and the results came out positive as explained by the CHP.
The baby, she said also weighed five kilograms and had delayed developmental milestones. “She was placed on treatment while I was tasked with the job of conducting routine follow-up,” she says.
The baby was on medication for the next six months, amid treatment, she started gaining weight.
To establish the origin of the infection, the babies’ close family members including the mother were taken through a TB test but the results came out negative.
According to the CHP, the baby is now three years old and is able to walk and run around just like other children.
“She has since been declared free from TB infection,” says Ms Namayi adding that the child’s grandmother went ahead to share the news of how she helped save the life of her granddaughter in the church.
Since then, the church often allocates time to allow the CHP to create TB awareness to the congregants.
“I always feel good whenever the patients I link up to the facility get treatment and are reintegrated back into the community without re-infecting others,” she concludes.
