Community-level health volunteers and workers play a critical role across a wide range of health interventions—from risk communication and cholera prevention, to psychosocial support and prevention of non-communicable diseases.

In some contexts, this will require task shifting to allow those with less formal health training to undertake interventions otherwise unavailable to certain communities. And other policy revisions need to ensure a conducive environment for humanitarian action by local community health volunteers.

More funding—for instance, for training and protective equipment, especially in the context of COVID-19—will also be needed to scale up volunteering programmes to deliver at the scale needed to achieve universal health coverage.

Through One WASH, the IFRC is delivering long-term WASH infrastructure and public health measures to speed up and localize responses to cholera outbreaks. Our aim is to reduce cholera deaths by 90% by 2030.

With the support of governments and donors, and working together with other partners, we could bring cholera to an end around the world. All that is required is targeted investment at the community level.

Click here to learn more about our work tackling cholera.

The COVID-19 pandemic, and its many secondary impacts and restrictions, have had a devastating impact on mental health and psychosocial well-being. It has made clear just how much these kinds of hidden wounds from crises can impact the well-being of individuals and communities.

Yet national emergency management plans, programmes and budgets have often overlooked this critical risk. We have also traditionally overlooked the value of psychosocial support beyond traditional mental health interventions.

Learning from the COVID-19 experience, we must further invest and prepare in this critical area of care and support.