Ill health increases poverty. Improving community health is a first step to economic empowerment.

Since 2003, Rafiki has worked with rural communities using a holistic and integrated approach towards achieving the WHO definition of health: a state of complete physical, mental and social well being and not merely the absence of diseases or infirmity.

We undertake this activity because preventive health care tends not to be a primary goal of formal government healthcare systems. Rafiki’s focus is on education and building the skills that enable a community to live and choose behaviors that contribute directly to good health and disease prevention, as well as to seek care for treatment and advice when sick. Our approach in these areas is as follows:

Health Promotion:

• Ensuring a healthy diet (agroforestry)
  
  
• Building healthy relationships to ensure mutual support in meeting daily needs as well as coping with shocks in life (psycho-social support)
  
  
• Monitoring health status to promote early detection of problems for timely action (community strategy)
  
  
• Using available services to monitor nutrition, chronic conditions and other causes of disability (community strategy)
  
  

Disease Prevention

• Practising good personal hygiene in terms of washing hands, using latrines, etc. (psychosocial support)
  
  
• Using safe drinking water. (community water projects)
  
  
• Protecting against malaria (malaria prevention)
  
  
• Preventing abuse, and taking appropriate action when it occurs (advocacy & rights)
  
  
• Ensuring appropriate sexual behavior to prevent transmission of sexually transmitted diseases (behavior change)
  
  

Care seeking and compliance with treatment and advice

• Giving sick household members appropriate home care for illness (community strategy)
  
  
• Taking children as scheduled to complete a full course of immunizations. (community strategy)
  
  
• Recognizing and acting on the need for referral or seeking care outside the home. (community strategy)
  
  
• Following recommendations given by health workers in relation to treatment, follow up and referral. (community strategy)
  
  
• Ensuring that every pregnant woman receives antenatal and maternity care services. (community strategy)