Community health workers in Bolivia: adapting to traditional roles in the Andean community

Community health workers (CHW) constitute an outreach program where community members become involved in their health concerns and elect someone to be trained and administer primary health care. A major problem is that CHWs do not fit into leadership roles of either modern or traditional medicine. CHWs of Oruro, Bolivia, are discussed to examine the success of this program in which CHWs adapted to political, economic, and cultural patterns of Andean communities.