Community Health Worker Salary in South Africa

Community health worker salary in South Africa has been a topic of curiosity among young South Africans. This group of health workers play a major and significant role in health and the community at large.

This article gives an in-depth information about the salaries of community health workers and the roles they play.

A community health worker also called public health worker some countries works in the community and therefore has direction contact and interactions with the people right from the root.

Their approach to health care is more specific to the home setting than the clinical. A community health worker must be caring, respectful, problem solver, have good communication skills and passionate.

Let’s have a look at the roles of a community health worker

Roles of a community health worker

In south Africa chw have the following duties.

A community health worker counsels clients concerning their health

Health counseling entails diet suggestions for a healthy life, primary prevention methods, antenatal services and many more.

The community health worker works with other health workers to plan on the best ways to treat client by assessing the client’s health problems. The client’s family and relatives are involved in the provision of care and are well informed on the status of the client.
They utilize resources available to the community to assist in caring for the client. These resources can be money and even organizations that help those in need in society. In the case where the client has no income to pay for health care and has no relatives to help out, the nurse can connect the client to social welfare to render assistance. In such situations, they serve as advocates because they speak on behalf of their clients to the organizations involved.
They are also are involved in immunization exercises in the community as well as follow up trips to check on clients. They administer vaccines and medications to community members.
Community health workers treat patients in their homes to prevent them from spreading or catching illnesses. Especially those with communicable diseases.

The above and many more are the roles of a community health worker in South Africa. Now let’s move to how much a chw earns per month?

The salary of a community health worker is determined by several factors some which include:

Level of education: it is obvious a chw with a higher level of education will earn much than the other with a lower level. It is therefore very prudent to further your education as a community health worker either to the first degree or master’s level.
Ranks: higher ranking community health workers earns higher salaries
Area of work: salaries of private chw vary from that of the public sector. This article however focuses on the salary of community health worker in the public sector.

Parts of a community health worker salary

The various components of a chw’s salary are explained below.

The management level salary is based on a Total Cost to Employer package whiles production and supervisory levels are based on a basic salary with the following allowances.