POST 00781E : MEASLES CAMPAIGN AND ITN DISTRIBUTION
Follow-up on Posts 00763E, 00765E, 00767E, 00768E, 00771E, 00774E and 00778E
24 April 2005
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Two contribution to pursue this discussion. The first is from Gerhard Hesse
(mailto:
[email protected]) from France, followed by that
of George Greer (mailto:
[email protected]) from the United States
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Dear All,
I think the conclusion of the article by Mark Grabowsky and colleagues is
self speaking:.....These findings suggest that linking bednet distribution
to measles vaccination campaigns may provide an important oppportunity for
achieving high and equitable coverage of bednets.
During the Measles Partnership meeting in February in Washington the RBM
Partnership participated for the first time officially, and now with the
coming RBM Board meeting a representative of the Measles Partnership will
attend this meeting. To be honest and coming from the Malaria side, I must
admit that we are in most cases far away from achieving the coverage which
seems to be routine for the "vaccination" people. And what convinced me,
coming from the private sector where we are looking obviously more for
synergies than sometimes the public sector seems to do, are in fact the
synergies. One result from the recent Togo campaign shows that very clear:
50% of the women asked why they came to the vaccinations of their childs,
said because bednets are freely distributed.
From my point of view I think we cannot allow ourselves to miss one chance
to get ITNs into the field to the vulnerable groups (another synergy - the
target group children < 5). Only coverage makes the difference in ITN from
being converted from a personal protection tool into a vector control tool.
Pierre Guillet from WHO/AFRO told us once that already 25% coverage can be
seen having an impact on malaria, but we are looking for 60% - and in most
cases we are still far away from the 25%.
Best wishes for a nice weekend to everybody.
Best regards / meilleures salutations / mit freundlichen Gruessen
Gerhard
Dr. Gerhard Hesse,
Bayer Environmental Science S.A.S.
Business Manager Vector Control,
Lyon, France
----------------------------------
Jean and others,
This is a very interesting, and for me timely, discussion. In East Timor,
BASICS is working with the Ministry of Health and various NGOs to achieve
rapid delivery of ITNs to children under 5. This will be in addition to an
on-going program headed by Health Net International that has achieved high
coverage of pregnant women through routine delivery at ANC visits. The HNI
program will have reached all districts of the country later this year. The
combined effect of these two approaches seems very similar to the Red Cross
implementation in Togo, where delivery through the measles campaign is
paired with routine distribution through ANC distribution. One point of
difference is that the community-based delivery of ITNs to families with
children under 5 in East Timor will not be linked to delivery of other
interventions.
Developing the approaches for the community-based distribution is in a
formative stage. The partners (MoH, NGOs, GF and BASICS) will jointly
develop the common principals for the intervention. At a minimum this will
include use of common BCC approaches and materials, systems to ensure
accountability for delivery of ITNs, process indicators to measure program
execution and outcome indicators to measure levels of children under 5
sleeping under ITNs. After developing a proposal that meets the standards
set by the group, NGOs will be supported through BASICS to implement
community-based distribution.
I know of no other large-scale, free-standing community-based distribution
of ITN, i.e. not linked to an existing infrastructure/activity such as
measles campaigns. Our approach will almost certainly be more expensive
than those that are linked to campaigns and is unlikely to become a model
to reach larger populations (East Timor's population is less than 1
million). It will, however, provide a look at a an approach that links a
sustainable, routine delivery of ITNs into the population (through ANC
visits) with a one time effort to rapidly reach high coverage for children
under 5. We would be interested inputs, advice and materials used in other
large scale ITN distributions, both those that were linked with
immunization campaigns and those that were not. Also, of interest would be
experience/insights on how to minimize the effects of the mass
distributions on the on-going routine delivery through ANC visits.
Thanks in advance,
George Greer
George Greer, Ph.D.
Malaria Technical Officer,
BASICS Project,
Arlington, VA, USA
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