Roadmap for CBEHPP : Community-Based Environmental Health Promotion Programme

Rwanda's health statistics reveal that most of the diseases attended to at health facilities can be prevented through improved hygiene behaviour and sanitation. The Government of Rwanda, through the Ministry of Health, launched the Community Based Environmental Health Promotion Programme (CBEHPP) on 17th December 2009. The purpose of this programme is to significantly reduce, by 2012, the debilitating national disease burden that currently exists, and by doing so, contribute significantly to poverty reduction outcomes. CBEHPP will strengthen the capacity of approximately 45,000 Community Health Workers (CHWs), who are located in 15,000 identified villages, through the adoption of the holistic Community Hygiene Club (CHC) methodology, as a means of rapidly attaining hygiene behaviour changes that are both sustainable and cost effective. The CBEHPP approach will reach out to all
communities and empower them to identify their personal and domestic hygiene and environmental health related problems
(including safe drinking water and improved sanitation), thereafter, to actively participate in the problem solving process. CBEHPP is
embedded in the Health Sector Strategic Plan (2009-2012 ) of the Ministry of Health. [authors abstract]