Covid-19 Household Screening: Challenges Experienced by Community Health Care Workers in Thulamela Municipality of Vhembe District, Limpopo Province

Abstract

During the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in South Africa, community healthcare workers were working as foot soldiers to screen community members for COVID-19 in the community members’ households. The current study investigated the challenges experienced by community healthcare workers during COVID-19 household screening, with a distinct focus on the Thulamela Municipality. The study adopted the qualitative approach, embedded within the explorative and descriptive research designs, to explore the challenges experienced by community healthcare workers during COVID-19 household screening. The population were all community healthcare workers working within communities, as deployed by primary healthcare facilities in the Vhembe District. This study adopted purposive sampling to select both participants and two PHC facilities located in Thulamela Municipality. A face-to-face in-depth, unstructured interview was employed as a data collection method. Data collection was discontinued after data saturation, which occurred after interviewing 17 participants. The data collection instrument was pre-tested using three community healthcare workers. Furthermore, data was analysed using the thematic data analysis approach. The findings revealed that the challenges experienced by the community healthcare workers within communities vary, based on context. Lack of knowledge and experience regarding COVID-19 deepened the challenges that were experienced by community workers during the COVID-19 household screening, apart from the socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. Further research is required to enhance understanding of the challenges experienced during the COVID-19 household screening, to formulate some strategies to deal with future health crises, such as COVID-19.