Malaria Consortium to equip village health teams

By Prossy Nandudu

The Malaria Consortium programme is to distribute Rapid Diagnostic kits (RDT) for malaria to village health teams to reduce the number of infant and child mortality deaths due to malaria.

The village health teams (VHTs) that will be using the testing kits, have already been trained and given the necessary guidelines to follow.

This was revealed by Dr. Godfrey Magumba, the country director of the Malaria Consortium, at a fundraising held at Rainbow International School in Kansanga near Kampala on Saturday.

A total of sh24m in cash and pledges was raised and will be used to purchase the RDTs.

“We chose diagnostic methods of malaria so as to conduct a quick assessment of fever, diagnose and refer those the VHTs cannot handle to referral health centres. This way, we shall be able to reduce deaths due to malaria,” Dr. Magumba said.

He said RDT is the third option in the treatment of malaria that the consortium is promoting to reduce the mortality rate due to malaria, especially among children below five years of age and pregnant mothers.

Magumba said the option will supplement the ongoing initiatives like prevention, which involves sleeping under an insecticide-treated mosquito net, plus taking proper medication.

The distribution of rapid testing kits will supplement the Government’s plan of distributing insecticide-treated mosquito nets to every household across the country.

The development comes ahead of the celebrations marking the World Malaria Day in Uganda that will take place on May 10.

The World Health Organisation estimates that 660,000 people worldwide die of malaria annually. Most of these are children aged under five years, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

The report adds that every year, over 200 million malaria cases occur, but most of those cases are never tested or registered.