Community case management of malaria
The WHO Global Malaria Programme has been awarded a grant by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to support the scale-up of integrated Community Case Management (iCCM) of childhood illnesses using malaria as an entry point. The project called RAcE 2015 will be implemented in the following five malaria-endemic countries in sub-Saharan Africa: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger and Nigeria.
RAcE 2015 will award grants of about US$ 2 million annually, renewable for 4-5 years, to selected institutions or organizations submitting successful proposals. WHO is now calling for expressions of interest from beneficiary countries and will be publishing calls in several steps. The deadline for letters of interest from Democratic Republic of the Congo and Niger is 4 November 2012. Call for Letters of Interest – Democratic Republic of the Congo and Niger
The main objective of RAcE 2015 is to catalyze the scale-up of community case management of malaria (CCMm) and integrated community case management (iCCM), which includes the treatment of pneumonia and diarrhea, as an integral part of government health services in sub-Saharan Africa. The goal is to increase coverage of diagnostic, treatment, and referral services for these major causes of childhood mortality and thereby accelerate progress toward the health-related Millennium Development Goals. The activities will also directly contribute to the implementation of the UN Secretary General’s Every Woman Every Child initiative.
The RAcE 2015 project will be implemented in approximately one thousand villages in all beneficiary countries, covering areas with a total population of about one million in each country, including approx. 150,000 children under five. In the course of the project, a total of 7,500 community health workers will be supported and trained, and 750,000 children will be covered annually in the five countries.
The secondary objective of the initiative is to generate evidence to inform WHO policy recommendations and programmatic guidance on iCMM. A technical consultation will be organized at the start of the project to provide guidance on the package of cost-effective interventions and programmatic tools for iCMM implementation. The experience generated by country projects will be reviewed at the end of the project to draw lessons learnt and update WHO guidance on iCCM. Lessons learnt will also be reviewed at annual WHO inter-country regional meetings to share experiences and identify best practices for the scale-up of iCCM programmes in malaria-endemic countries.
The project will stimulate policy review and regulatory update in each country on disease case management (especially on diagnostic procedures and the use of antibiotics in peripheral settings), and demand adaptation of supply management and surveillance systems to include services at community level, e.g. the use of new technologies. Annual stakeholder meetings will be organized at national level, involving multiple country-level steering committees, coordinated by the respective ministries of health. This will promote full ownership of the iCCM intervention by national health authorities, and create the basis for a successful handover once donor support ends.