Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world, and Afar, in the north-east of the country, is one of its most disadvantaged regions. Nine out of ten people do not have access to safe water and the literacy rate is the lowest in the country at 7%.
Afar is particularly prone to malaria, yet it only has two clinics to serve a population of 1.3 million people. Many are unaware of how to protect themselves against the disease and commonly available drugs have become less effective as people have grown resistant to them.
Pregnant women and young children are at risk of contracting malaria because their immune systems are weak. The infant mortality rate is 118 per 1,000 live births – twenty three times the British average.
Aims
AMREF has identified malaria as a priority in Afar. As a result its health care initiative aims to:
- Increase the use of mosquito nets by pregnant women and young children
- Improve the quality of testing being carried out to diagnose malaria
- Develop systems that allow people to treat malaria with effective drugs in the home
- Educate communities about how to control the spread of malaria
- To strengthen AMREF’s partnerships in Afar and to expand the programme to cover more areas of the district
Key achievements
- 99,000 mosquito nets have been distributed to pregnant women and young children in 11 districts – 99% of households in the project area have received two nets each
- Communities in these districts have been trained how to use their new mosquito nets and shown how they can help prevent malaria
- AMREF has trained 300 “mother coordinators” to help families protect themselves from malaria in their own homes
- The project has expanded to cover new districts, protecting more vulnerable communities from malaria.
The project, now in its final year, is conducting research into the use of rapid diagnostic tests by mother coordinators – this will allow them to test for malaria in villages that may be some distance from clinics
