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Empowered village health volunteers are making significant
contributions towards malaria control, there is no more death attributed to
malaria in their respective communities and the villagers appreciated very
much their services. These sum up the progress to
date of community-based malaria control project in 160 remote hard to reach
villages being implemented by the Myanmar Council of Churches (MCC). It is
financially supported by Three Diseases Fund (3DF), and with technical and
management support by WHO.
The project started in 2004 in 94 hard to reach villages
in Chin State,
Kachin
State and Sagaing Division with support from Global Fund, continued
with 3DF “bridge fund”, with technical assistance from VBDC and WHO. In
February-March 2008, 66 additional volunteers were included. In each target
village, the health committee, village elders and Church leaders selected one
volunteer. The volunteers are
empowered to implement two key interventions: (1) prevention using
insecticide-treated mosquito nets (ITNs) and long
lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs), and (2) early
diagnosis and appropriate treatment as per the national malaria treatment
policy.
During the period from Jan 2007 to Nov 2008, the
volunteers attended a total of 28,082 persons with febrile illnesses,
examined for malaria 25,401 people, detected 9,858
P. falciparum malaria and 14,461 probable malaria
cases. On average per month each
volunteer attended 10 febrile cases, examined for malaria 9 persons, detected
and treated 4 P. falciparum
malaria and 5 probable malaria, mostly during the first 2 - 3 days of
illness. The early detection and appropriate treatment with effective drugs
prevented the development of severe malaria and deaths. As expected, most malaria cases occurred
during the rainy months.
Moreover, in 2008 the volunteers treated with insecticides
32,605 mosquito nets and distributed 5,000 long lasting insecticidal nets.
They educated and motivated the people to sleep inside mosquito nets every
night.
Aside from strong community ownership, other factors that
help sustained the performance of the volunteers are: refresher training,
logistic support, supportive supervision, monitoring, annual evaluation and
planning meetings and feedback to the target communities. Sustaining the
community ownership and the logistics and technical support for the project
are continuing challenges.
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Insecticide-treatment of mosquito nets
by the villagers under the guidance of trained volunteer
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