Policy &Strategy Bill Brieger | 25 Jun 2013 06:03 am
Taking malaria capacity building to scale: Lessons on an Integrated Policy Package from Burkina Faso
Presented at Jhpiego’s Mini-University, 24 June 2013 in Baltimore by Bill Brieger, Rachel Waxman, Elaine Roman and Ousmane Badolo
Between October 2009 and March 2013, with support from the USAID Malaria Program, the Maternal and Child Health Integrated Program (MCHIP), led by Jhpiego has worked in close collaboration with the National Malaria Control Program (NMCP) and the Family Health Directorate (MCH) to accelerate malaria prevention and control in Burkina Faso with a focus on nationwide scale up.
Scale up is defined as program coverage nationwide. During the project years, Jhpiego provided technical and programmatic support to address comprehensive malaria prevention and control with a focus on diagnostics, treatment, and malaria in pregnancy (MIP) in Burkina Faso. This resulted in: 2,648 health facility providers trained using the integrated malaria training package; these providers in turn, oriented 4,867 of their colleagues.
Other key components of technical support included strengthening- a) supportive supervision; b) pre-service education; c) human capacity (team building); and d) communications and behavior change guidance at national level as well as targeting communication messages to both health facility providers and clients. Training is US Peace Corps Volunteers helped reinforce that this guidance reached front line health facilities and volunteer community health agents.
Some of the lessons learned in going to scale are balancing reaching providers en mass with quality support; ensuring a link between revised policies and guidelines and both pre-service education and in-service training; and recognizing the need for national level leadership and capacity to ensure effective implementation.
As countries accelerate and scale up their malaria programs, the lessons learned from Burkina Faso a systematic development of an integrated package of malaria policies and guidelines are important to consider moving forward.