Tropical Health Matters

Gawrie Galappaththy guided a session at the Asia Pacific Malaria Elimination Network’s Community Engagement for Malaria Elimination Workshop that helped participants summarize their group work on training and research to support community participation in malaria elimination.  Her report follows:

All the participants were agreed and thought that following training areas are necessary for effective community engagement for malaria elimination.  Thoughts about training included key topics and target groups as seen below.

• Advocacy – Advocacy  is needed for all level including central, district, village level for all the category of staff
• Partnership with other sectors- specially with the public sector as more than 50% of patients in most of the countries seek treatment from the public sector
• Skills on communication methods – As most of the health personnel is not very much familiar with communication, methods it is important to train all the trainers on communication methods eg -COMBI, materials, participatory approach)
• Resource mobilization- funds as well as personals
• Integration with other diseases – community engagement as an integral part of the health (health package)
• Training for community – training of community on every aspects of malaria
• Strategy developments – most of the malaria programmes in their strategic plans not mentions the involvement of community in malaria elimination. It is important to include this aspect along with key activities
• Skills on Monitoring & Evaluation – most of the countries engaged community for malaria control but lack M&E component. It is important to include M&E as an integral part of the elimination statergy
• Empowerment of community for sustainability of community engagement in malaria elimination

Many research areas were identified by the participants, but need to priority areas depending on funds availability.  Examples of priority research issues included …

• Cost effectiveness of engagement of community in malaria elimination
• Improvement of drug compliance specially among migrant workers
• Case studies or documentation of success stories
• Promote treatment seeking behaviour specially in   malaria elimination countries
• KAP studies on malaria especially since perceptions may change as we progress toward elimination
• Role of community in malaria elimination
• Effectiveness of village malaria posts/brigade in malaria elimination
• Role of NGOs/FBOs in malaria using community engagement
• Development and testing of Training modules
• Research on new mechanisms of community  engagement for mobile population
• Understand community structure and to identify the mechanism to sustain motivationAchieving synchronous cross boarder community engagement for malaria elimination

Of particular interest in the region are the training and research needs to identify and test strategies for community engagement between countries – cross-border areas present a special challenge in terms of mobile populations and malaria medicine resistance. APMEN therefore, has to play a major role in advocacy as it is important to increase awareness among politicians, decision makers regarding cross border problems between countries. APMEN can raise a voice in international bodies such as SAARC, ASEAN, BIMSTEC etc.

Regular meetings in cross-border areas are essential at district/state level between countries eg  Bhutan and ASSAM, Bhutan and West Bengal.  There is need to address the issue of communication methods between countries taking into consideration ethnicity, language, cultural background etc

Priority Research and training needs for cross-border areas include descriptive studies to understand the migrant pattern, behavior, and risk groups. We also require needs assessment studies including assessments of existing facilities among border populations.

On the final day of the workshop, participants refined and prioritized these research and training topics for follow-up action back home.

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