Providing diagnosis and treatment at a local level
A two-year pilot project was undertaken in Ethiopia to assess how training and equipping local community health workers could help achieve effective management of malaria in rural areas. The project took place in the Tigray region of Northern Ethiopia, an area prone to malaria epidemics and where less than half the population live within easy reach of a health centre.68
Volunteers were chosen to act as community health workers, and were trained in correct diagnosis of malaria, administration of Coartem®, and community education. In the second year of the project, half the volunteers were also given rapid diagnostic tests to help ensure that Coartem® was only given to patients with malaria due to P. falciparum with the aims of minimizing the risk of resistance developing and improving cost effectiveness.
During a major malaria epidemic in 2005, the district in which the local volunteers were operating had approximately half the rate of malaria-related deaths compared to a similar district in which Coartem® was available only in state health facilities.69
The project is the result of a collaborative agreement between Novartis Italy, the Italian Ministry of Health, the Tigray Health Bureau, the WHO Global Malaria Programme, the Italian Dermatological Hospital of Mekelle and the Department of Preventative Medicine of San Gallicano Dermatological Institute IRCCS in Rome.
Committed to education and training
Novartis has an ongoing commitment to the education of healthcare workers and the communities they serve. Initiatives include training courses, for example a malaria case management programme for nurses in Zambia, and the development of educational materials for healthcare workers and mothers/caregivers. These have been translated into several different African languages, and are distributed free of charge to the countries that request them.
