POST 00796E : MEASLES CAMPAIGN AND ITN DISTRIBUTION
Follow-up on Posts 00763E, 00765E, 00767E, 00768E, 00771E, 00774E,
00778E, 00781E, 00784E, 00789E, 00789E and 00792E
3 June 2005
_____________________________________
This posting contains four short contributions. The first is from Christian
Lengeler (mailto:[email protected]) from the Swiss Tropical
Institute, answers Robert Steinglass' question about the relevance of a
statement from an earlier RBM document : "Large-scale and untargeted
distribution of no-cost (or highly subsidized) nets is not sustainable and
is likely to be counter-productive in the long term." (Post 00789E).
The second comes from David Hipgrave (mailto:[email protected]) based in
Indonesia, encouraging a colleague, Allan Schapira
(mailto:[email protected]) from RBM/WHO to contribute to the discussion.
Allan does send the third contribution, also responding to Robert.
Finally, Anthony Battersby (mailto:[email protected]) asks a couple of
questions far from silly. Without being cynical, the whole point of
economic growth and foreign assistance is to create dependency, isn't it?
_____________________________________
Dear Robert, Dear colleagues
This statement is not current any more, as the RBM group on ITNs has now
integrated the recent experience of free ITN distribution. A new version is
likely to come out soon.
In any case, the view of many of us (in the malaria /ITN community) remains
that vaccination might offer a golden opportunity to do something now and
doing it fast, but that longer-term strategies ensuring a constant supply
of ITNs to pregnant women and young children are even more important.
Christian Lengeler
----------------------------------
Allan, hello!
There has been a very active debate - some of quite lively - on the pros
and cons on ITN distribution as part of mass measles campaigns. In today's
second contribution from Robert Steinglass, who has been a great advocate
for ensuring that such campaigns should be better used to improve routine
EPI, he asks whether there has been any similar debate on malaria mailing
lists? He also asks an opinion from someone such as yourself, based on a
2002 quote regarding the subsidised ITN distribution from an RBM technical
document.
I wonder if you would have time to respond through the mailing list.
Thanks in anticipation and best regards Allan.
David
Dr David Hipgrave
Chief, Health and Nutrition Unit,
UNICEF Indonesia
---------------------------
As to the below quote, it could be said about most public health
interventions that if nothing is done to sustain them, they are not
sustainable. The quote dates from a time, when there was no public
confidence in the will of the international community to invest seriously
in malaria control.
As for campaigns against routine EPI, it is easy to list the pros and cons
of these two approaches and based on that , there should be no reason to
accept that it is either or. However, it needs to be said that there has
been much more publicity about ITN distribution with measles campaigns than
about combination with routine EPI. UNICEF is the organization with most
experience in the latter approach. The view of WHO staff is that we need to
place much more emphasis on that, while the combination with measles is
mainly to be applied where there is a need for rapidly scaling up coverage
especially for underserved population groups.
Mark Young from UNICEF and Kabir Cham from my department may have more to
contribute. We recently had a meeting in Harare beginning of this month on
this.
Allan
Dr Allan Schapira
Coordinator, Strategy and Policy Team (MSP)
Roll Back Malaria Department (HTM/RBM)
WHO
---------------------------
Maybe these are silly questions,
1. where are the nets that are distributed during measles campaigns
manufactured?
If they are made locally that's one thing, if they are imported then that
kills the local industry and builds in dependence on imports.
2. Is there any evidence that nets distributed free are actually used long
term and they get retreated?
Thanks
Anthony
______________________________________________________________________________
Visit the TECHNET21 Website at http://www.technet21.org
You will find instructions to subscribe, a direct access to archives, links to reference documents and other features.
______________________________________________________________________________
To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message to : mailto:[email protected]
Leave the subject area BLANK
In the message body, write unsubscribe TECHNET21E
______________________________________________________________________________
The World Health Organization and UNICEF support TechNet21. The TechNet21 e-Forum is a communication/information tool for generation of ideas on how to improve immunization services. It is moderated by Claude Letarte and is hosted in cooperation with the Centre de coopération internationale en santé et développement, Québec, Canada (http://www.ccisd.org)
______________________________________________________________________________
There are no replies made for this post yet.