Source: https://www.ifrc.org/Global/Publications/Health/Beyond_Prevention_HMM%20Malaria-EN.pdf
Access to health services is particularly difficult for the poor and those in more inaccessible areas of Kenya. This lack of endemic disease treatment for communities has proven to be quite deadly. With more than 11.3 million cases recorded annually, malaria is the leading killer of children under five years of age in Kenya. CCM, supported by organizations such as WHO and UNICEF, allows Kenya to effectively fight Malaria by using evidence-based life saving treatments that increase the availability and quality of proven interventions. Using a CCM strategy has shown to decrease under-five malaria mortality by 60% overall under-five mortality by 40%. In Kenya particularly, the CCM pilot program has generated convincing results as seen in the graphic below.
Access to Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACT) has increased and the education of communities provided by health workers has improved treatment seeking behavior. While the pilot CCM program is an important step to combating malaria, we are in the right time to take the success of this program and implement it country-wide. Most importantly, CCM is part of the National Malaria Strategy, but it requires a more pronounced place in the plan to implement the successes of the pilot program in all 8 districts.
Action Needed: The Kenyan Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation (MoPHS) needs to commit and push ahead their own stated agenda for putting community health first by integrating malaria treatment into the already implemented diarrhea CCM program by the end of 2015.
Graphic: https://www.ifrc.org/Global/Publications/Health/Beyond_Prevention_HMM%20Malaria-EN.pdf
Social, Cultural & Behavioral Issues in PHC & Global Health 
March 5, 2015 at 8:52 am |
[…] Arianna Hutcheson has posted the following blog on our course website – Social and Behavioral Foundations of Primary Health Care […]
March 5, 2015 at 11:41 am |
Very interesting topic! Thanks for sharing this. I completely agree the MoPHS should include Malaria in the already existing diarrhea CCM program. Malaria is still the top child killer in the world. And in developing countries, specially in Africa, cultural beliefs and treatment with herbs or rituals are still very ingrained. In addition, sometimes malaria gets under-diagnosed because of its vague symptoms (fever, nausea and vomiting, muscular pain, headache,etc) missing the opportunity of early treatment. Increasing education on treatment seeking behavior is a key measure to reduce Malaria deaths. Hope this program get implemented, soon.
March 5, 2015 at 12:36 pm |
I really enjoyed reading your post! The data clearly shows that the CCM strategy can be highly effective, and as you pointed out, it should be a very high priority to reduce the tremendous disease burden caused by malaria, particularly in children under the age of five. I think the results of the pilot program will be extremely useful in getting the government to implement the CCM program across all of Kenya.
March 11, 2015 at 5:21 pm |
Thank you for an interesting and well-researched post! Access to appropriate basic health care remains to be one of the biggest issues in global public health and community focused programs such as CCM are innovative ways of addressing it. I agree with the need to move forward with the success of the pilot program in Kenya and plan and implement nation wide scale-up of the program. Too often we see very successful pilot health programs that do not go any further or fail miserably when scaled-up. Thus, several issues that could potentially affect the long term sustainability of the program such as regular monitoring and evaluation system to identify what is working and what is not, reliable supply chains to support the works of the health workers, and adequate and skilled human resource and strategies to maintain high morale and motivation among the health workers also need to be considered and integrated.