Community Health Department (CHD) of the Aga Khan Health Service in Mombasa

Nikhil Agarwal writes about his experience working at CHD in Mombasa.

So, I’m working at the Community Health Department (CHD) of the Aga Khan Health Service on the campus of the Aga Khan Hospital in Mombasa. CHD is a small organization, just under 20 staff and..well..no budget! Quite a drastic change when you come from an organization with 12,000 staff and a $1.5 billion budget. I have to bring my own pens to work with me here. Like many other NGO’s we are solely dependent on grants for our funding, and unlike some other NGO’s under the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) we do not receive any type of funding from AKDN or the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF). While being independent of AKDN/AKF is a source of great pride, it is also comes with some risk. You see, CHD is currently wrapping up a major grant that has basically been sustaining the organization for the past 4 years. It was a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to implement a Community Based Health Information System (CBHIS) in one of the poorest districts in Kenya – Kwale District. Basically, we want to modernize the system from paper to electronic while also providing a comparison for the health information that is collected at a higher level. CHD has done a lot, kinda like the little engine that could.

Complete at the source