[afro-nets] Home test kits recommended to lower malaria deaths

[Leela McCullough <leela@healthnet.org>]

Home test kits recommended to lower malaria deaths
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Kennedy Abawo
29 January 2007
Source: SciDev.Net

http://www.scidev.net/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=readNews&itemid=3371&language=1

[ADDIS ABABA] Africa must work towards providing home-based
rapid diagnostic test kits and give more consideration to gender
issues in the fight against malaria, a new report recommends.

The report, commissioned by Femmes Africa Solidarite and
released at the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
last week (25 January), explores the issue of gender in malaria
policies.

It recommends the use of home-based malaria test kits based on a
pilot study carried out by the World Health Organization (WHO)
in 135 remote villages in Rattanakiri province, north-eastern
Cambodia.

The study found that the rapid diagnostic kits helped to reduce
malaria deaths in the region by nearly one third in four years.

According to Peja Olukoya, of the WHO's department of gender,
women and health, access to malaria prevention methods and
treatment is crucial in Africa, especially for high-risk groups
such as pregnant women and people living with HIV/AIDS.

The report urges decision-makers at all levels to consider
gender issues in their malaria policies and allow for decisions
to be made at the community level.

It says health centres should be given financial and technical
help to provide compulsory and free sex education, especially
for adolescent girls at risk of early pregnancy.

These recommendations are based on studies, discussed in the
report, which show that women find it difficult to access
healthcare services because of often busy schedules, including
heavy workloads, which leaves them with little time to seek
medical services.

"Women are not in the habit of expressing their health needs or
they are perceived as sexually disloyal if they visit a male
health worker," states the report, which calls for qualitative
research to address gender related barriers to prevention and
treatment.

It also calls for more social research on "intra-household power
dynamics" which determine who sleeps under insecticide treated
nets and who wakes up earliest to undertake the basic domestic
work to keep the family alive.
The report was jointly authored by the Global Gender and Malaria
Network, which comprises the WHO's Roll Back Malaria Initiative,
Femmes Africa Solidarite and the Multilateral Initiative on
Malaria.

--
Leela McCullough, Ed.D.
Director of Information Services
AED-SATELLIFE Center for Health Information and Technology
30 California Street, Watertown, MA 02472, USA
Tel: +1-617-926-9400
Fax: +1-617-926-1212
mailto:lmccullough@aed.org
http://www.healthnet.org