Three years ago, Dancilla Mukamusonera, 50, was chosen as a community health worker for her neighbourhood.

She was excited about the opportunity to help her friends and neighbours whom she had known for over 20 years. She trained for a few months, was given equipment and medicine, and started working. Ms Mukamusonera treats malaria, cough, diarrhoea, and mild fever.

When symptoms are severe, she sends patients to a nearby health facility. “My duty focuses more on children aged between six months and four years nine months. When I treat a child and they get better, it is the best feeling.

My job puts a smile on my face and my neighbours’,” she says. However, her list of responsibilities as a community health worker increased during the Covid-19 pandemic.

She went from treating malaria patients to monitoring whether patients who were isolating in their homes were adhering to the rules, and whether people were wearing face masks, and keeping a social distance.

Like all the 45,000 community health workers across the country, Ms Mukamusonera was involved in helping people get vaccinated, worked with health personnel to identify and monitor patients, among other duties.

Her role in enforcing Covid-19 guidelines and helping patients is commended, especially by her neighbours.

There was not a single death recorded in Kanogo village, Kicukiro district where she lives.

“Whenever I would want to go out of my house during the Covid-19 lockdown, I would always count on seeing Dancilla, and I knew she would ask me to put on my facemask or keep my distance.

So I would do it before she told me to,” said Gatera, one of Ms Mukamusonera's neighbours.

For the single mother of five, Ms Mukamusonera’s job is not an easy call. It requires sacrifice and compromise.

She has to juggle her side hustles to feed her family and fulfil community health work duties.

“Sometimes duty calls when I am busy with my children or taking care of my farms, and I have to drop everything. It was tough when I started, but then I got used to and started planning and involving my older child to help,” Ms Mukamusonera says.

The satisfaction and fulfillment she gains from helping others have kept her going. Quitting has never occurred to her even during the Covid-19 pandemic when she would be called to help a patient get an ambulance in the middle of the night.

“People give me great feedback. I have learned and grown so much over the past three years. My life changed from lonely and unfulfilled to more social and exciting.

I can count a few days when I don’t have someone at my house either seeking help or thanking me,” Ms Mukamusonera says with a smile.

In addition to the satisfaction Ms Mukamusonera gets from helping others, she values how much people trust her.

She has gained friends and people who confide in her about different life matters because of her job.