|
Malaria control activities in Central Highlands: difficulties in management of mobilised population
In recent years, various measures of malaria control have been applied to reduce malaria morbidity and mortality at the grass-roots levels. However, these measures failed to reach the mobilised population because of numerous reasons.
Why do mobilised people have high malaria morbidity and mortality rates?
Uncontrollable migration of people from malaria-free to malaria-endemic zones has been a worsening problem, exacerbating the efforts and deteriorating the sustainable factors in malaria control. Upon resettlement, this part of population live and work in farms, plantations and plot huts. According to the statistics of IMPE Quy Nhon, the morbidity and mortality rates of these groups are higher than local residents because of their subjective tendency in preventing malaria for themselves and their family. They go to work in the forests and spend the nights in the field-huts without sleeping under a bednet. Upon getting malaria, they often committed self-treament at their house, not going to local health facilities for treatment. Apparently, mobilised people don't have immunity to malaria, so when getting malaria, their clinical signs of malaria change rapidly from mildness to serevity and even fatality. In addition, health workers at the grassroot levels can't perform well in terms of detection and management of malaria patients, so supplying malaria drugs for self-treatment to mobilised people hasn't shown highly effective yet and malaria control measures haven't been carried out actively. Moreover, it is difficult for health centers to manage these groups because they often go to places out of their control. Dr. Trieu Nguyen Trung, Director of IMPE Quy Nhon said: "Many measures couldn't be carried out on these groups. It has been difficult to mobilize them to bring insecticide-treated hammocks and bednets, or to directly educate them on malaria control." Therefore, it is thought that if these groups of people were within the control and management of health sector, their proportion of malaria mobidity and mortality would reduce considerably. How to reduce malaria burden for illegal migrants?  |  | Health communication and education for malaria control | Supplying malaria drugs for self-treatment. |
Health communication and education for malaria control is one of the most effective measures being carried out in any places of Central Highlands such as community talks, radio broadcasts, discussion, direct communication at households, video shows, music shows, posters and leaflets delivery for millions of people, including the mobilised. Another effective malaria control measure was the "Competition on malaria control knowledge for ethnic minorities" which was reported at the International Workshop on Malaria Control for ethnic minorities in the Mekong Region, organized in Khanh Hoa province. This was highly appreciated because it was organized for ethnic minorities in remote areas with an aim of exploring their knowledge, behaviour and practice on malaria and control measures. "Through this measure," said Dr. Trieu Nguyen Trung, "the ethnic minorities, mobilised people and forest workers will have nothing to do with the passive messages transmitted by local health workers, but receive direct and easy-to-understand messages which turn into their practical actions for malaria control." Trung continued: "Besides, the role of local health workers should be taken into consideration in terms of moniroting and management of mobilised people in order to reduce malaria mobidity and mortality among them." However, the local health system is facing some challenges such as incapability of detecting malaria patients and especially, low allowance that have made a majority of health volunteers to shift to higher-earning farming. Therefore, according to Trung: "enhancing their technical qualification, training and retraining are urgent tasks." For those subjects of interest such as mobilised people and forest workers, together with the routine activities of monitoring, management and treatment, a simple but very important message should be reminded: Protect yourselves from malaria by sleeping under bednets and taking stand-by antimalarials upon going into endemic areas of malaria.
|
HOMEPAGE
Forum
Sitemap
Contact
Vietnamese
Petechial fever
