SYSTEMS FUND WHAT THEY CAN DEFINE.
Once a global standard exists, expectations change. Treating CHWs as volunteers on the margins of health systems is getting harder to justify.
With the release of a Global Curriculum Guide, the World Health Organization has set clearer expectations for what competent, safe community-based care requires and what systems must put in place to support it.
That clarity raises the bar:
- Minimal training looks insufficient
- No refresher training becomes difficult to defend
- Optional supervision looks less like flexibility and more like neglect
Governments and donors now face a choice.
Continue relying on under-supported workers while calling them essential. Or invest in CHWs as salaried, skilled, supervised, and supplied members of the health workforce that health systems already depend on.
Using and sharing this guide helps make proCHWs the norm, not the exception.
WHO Global curriculum guide for CHWs.