WHO Is Reaching Out To Malawi Communities To Cut Children Mortality Rate

The World Health Organization is working with the Malawi's Ministry of Health to train community health workers in how to treat common childhood diseases under the government-funded and 2013-launched Rapid Access Expansion program.

To combat child mortality, Malawi makes progress by moving critical health services closer to families in rural or remote areas, reported WHO.

Their approach is dubbed Integrated Community Case Management of childhood illnesses, and it focuses on diarrhea, pneumonia and malaria treatment, which, when combined, accounted to 45 percent of death among children younger than five years old in the Malawi in 2012.

Director of Preventive Health Services of Malawi Ministry of Health Dr. Storn Kabuluzi stated,"The incidence of preventable deaths among children underscored the need for the program years ago. So we adopted an aggressive strategy for child survival in 2008."

He noted that health workers were trained to give treatment for fevers and other illnesses in children. He referred to Millennium Development Goal which aimed to reduce mortality rate of children younger than five years old by two thirds in 1990 to 2015.

WHO with Malawi exceeded that goal as the mortality rate of kids under five was 245 per 1,000 live births in 1990. It then became 68 per a thousand in 2013, a reduction of 72 percent.

During the MDG era, maternal and child survival improved dramatically as mortality of under-five and maternal was dropped by half since 1990. The improvement accelerated after 2000, said the report "A Decade of Tracking Progress in Maternal, Newborn and Child Survival Countdown Headlines for 2015" a summary of which is posted on WHO and Malawi data Countdown to 2015 - Maternal, Newborn and Child Survival.

Previously, iCCM strategies were intended to be of service to people outside an eight-kilometer radius from the nearest health facility but RAcE reduced that distance to five kilometers.

A mother of 4, Priscilla Laimani said, "Frida Kabwango, the community health worker here, comes to the village clinic full-time Tuesdays and Fridays and the rest of the time we can go to her home."

"It's a relief to have these services and medicines available for free, just a few doors away, when our children have fever."