You Can’t Fight Malaria without Community Health Workers
Chimphanga, Malawi—Sitting under a tree outside his house in this village in central Malawi, Health Surveillance Assistant Makono is busy examining three-year-old Easter Jedesi. Easter’s mother, Venelesi Jedesi, brought her to Chimphanga clinic, as it is locally known, suspecting that her daughter could have malaria.
It wouldn’t come as a surprise. “During the rainy season like this month [March], malaria cases rise,” Makono says. “I see about 30 children every day and 20 out of the 30 have malaria.”
Makono feels Easter’s forehead to check for fever while Jedesi explains her daughter’s symptoms. He runs through a series of questions with the 27-year-old mother, screening for malnutrition and listening to Easter’s lungs for fast breathing—a potential sign of pneumonia.
Using his Community Case Management register, Makono determines that Easter has a mild case of malaria. Easter doesn’t have a severe fever or other complications so she is given a common, three-day drug used to treat malaria cases in Malawi. Makono asks Jedesi to give her daughter the first dose at the clinic and advises her to bring Easter back in three days for a follow-up visit.
An easy treatment for what could have developed into a much more serious issue, if left unchecked.
Makono is among 2,105 health workers being supported by the President’s Malaria Initiative through the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Support for Service Delivery Integration project. In collaboration with the Government of Malawi, the Jhpiego-led project trains health workers to diagnose and treat malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea and eye infections in children two months to five years old in hard-to-reach communities. The project also strengthens systems for maintaining malaria commodities so that communities like Chimphanga village do not go for long periods of time without drugs.
(More from Jhpiego)
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