Malaria scheme cuts child deaths during Sahel's rainy season

By the time sick kids reach a clinic, it can be too late. Through home visits, community health workers in Mali are spotting early signs of malaria, pneumonia, diarrheal disease, and malnutrition and providing treatment to sick kids right away. The approach shortens the time between the first signs of illness and treatment, saving lives in one of the countries with the highest rates of child mortality.

Haiti suffered tremendous losses after the 2010 earthquake, exacerbating the devastation in an already impoverished country. In 2015, agriculture in Haiti is a growing business backed by the United States’ Feed the Future Initiative. Nourishment and health of mothers and babies has also improved with the encouragement of breastfeeding and sweet potatoes.

Studies show that a single application of the antiseptic chlorhexidine, an affordable medicine, can reduce the risk of death among newborns by about 25 percent. In Nepal, where 20,000 newborns die every year, the medicine has revolutionary potential.

Hacey Health Initiative and Alabiyamo Maternal and Child Healthcare Foundation are improving maternal and newborn health in rural communities. The groups have provided more than 50,000 birthing kits containing sterilized tools and other essentials and handed out over 100,000 long-lasting treated nets to prevent malaria. Women and infants can get medications and important vaccinations, along with clothes and baby food. The care is free and the groups work with community gatekeepers, like leaders in local markets, midwives, and other traditional birthing assistants, whose buy in is important to build trust.

Doctors Without Borders treats malnutrition in areas of Nigeria facing food shortages due to violence and insurgency. When safe, it runs a mobile clinic to provide basic health care, including nutritional support, particularly to children. When communities are not safe enough to enter, the organization trains community members in basic patient care and provides them the tools to run basic tests and treat malnutrition. Community health workers are also trained to treat patients, dispense medications, and educate caregivers about child nutrition.

Kano State in Nigeria has implemented a strategy to increase the likelihood of children receiving necessary vaccinations to reduce cases of polio. The strategy, which included enhanced training on administering the vaccinations, taking the vaccines directly to homes and "collaboration between policy makers and traditional leaders," has resulted in no cases of polio for the last five years.

Cold storage supply chains improve the reliability of vaccine delivery. In Nigeria’s Kano State, the establishment of zonal cold stores has increased immunization coverage. Local nodes equipped with solar powered refrigeration provide storage for vaccines, which are then delivered to supply smaller health centers in the area. The initiative came from a partnership between the Nigerian state and nonprofits, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Cases of malaria in Uganda are increasing, and early diagnoses are key to managing the situation. Piggybacking off of the idea of using paper sensors, doctors have successfully been able to use this financially savvy way of testing with 98 percent accuracy and are now looking at implementing the process in rural areas where diagnoses are most difficult.

A pilot program in western Cambodia is taking a coordinated, localized approach to decreasing cases of malaria in remote, hard to reach areas. The U.S.-funded program called the President’s Malaria Initiative operates on two levels: rapid detection and reporting as well as training and paying local residents to detect, treat, and educate their communities about the parasite. The hyper-local approach helps receive buy-in and trust from residents, who are often fearful of officials coming into their towns.

Being in a conflict zone, primary healthcare in the state of Borno in Nigeria has suffered in recent years. In response to the crisis, Community Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) centers provide Ready-To-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) to treat children with severe acute malnutrition (SAM). The centers also work in tandem with Community Nutrition Mobilizers (CNMs) to follow up with mothers to ensure that the children are taking the medicine, to educate them on malnutrition in children, and to offer other primary care provisions like immunizations.