3.3.3 Prioritisation
As a Health Extension Practitioner you will be expected to prioritise and make strategic choices in order to implement your health plan. One of the important skills you need is the skill of prioritising. When you set priorities, you decide what is most important to tackle first.
You might think every problem is a priority and find it difficult to choose. One way to determine priority problems is to apply a set of selection criteria that establish a standard by which something can be measured. You can ask yourself the questions in Box 3.2 to help understand how serious and urgent a problem is.
Box 3.2 Selection criteria for evaluating a health problem
Does the problem:
- affect a large number of people, e.g. malaria, AIDS?
- cause high infant mortality, e.g. malnutrition, neonatal tetanus?
- affect maternal health, e.g. postpartum haemorrhage?
- affect rural development?
- cause great concern to the whole community?
In your community there is a lot of infestation with intestinal parasites. How could you use the criteria in Box 3.2 to evaluate this health problem?
Intestinal parasites do affect a large number of people, but they are not a direct cause of infant mortality and they don’t usually affect maternal health seriously either. But they may cause low energy levels and therefore be of general concern to your community, and they may also affect rural development to some extent. You could therefore say that intestinal parasites do need tackling, but other diseases may take priority because they are even more severe or more urgent.
3.3.2 Problem identification