The County Health Management team in collaboration of Catholic Relief Services (CRS) have held a three-day orientation for the Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention (SMC) tools, which will be piloted in Turkana Central Sub-County.
The tools were developed based on findings from seasonal malaria research in Turkana North and Central Sub-counties conducted by Moi University, in conjunction with Duke University. The SMC campaign in June 2024 is set to utilize specific tools to prevent malaria in children aged 3 to 59 months.
The objective of the training was to introduce and familiarize the health officers with the SMC tools which assist in making evidence-based decisions on the management of seasonal malaria in the county.
During the Courtesy call Dr. Gilchrist Lokoel, County Chief Officer for Medical Services, emphasized Turkana’s high malaria morbidity and mortality rate, recommending its classification as an endemic malaria zone. “Sixty percent of the people in Turkana are pastoralists thus coming up with this intervention will help prevent malaria as it will net this population,” he said.
Alice Akalapatan, Deputy Director for Medical Services, stated that health workers and Community Health Promoters were trained on SMC tools to ensure proper administration of SP+AQ drug to children. To add on, SP+AQ is a combination of malaria drugs that offers long-term protection during the rainy season, administered in intervals.
David Ekai, the Malaria Program Coordinator, announced the implementation of tools to improve commodity accountability, data collection, and management, thereby enhancing malaria intervention during the campaign.
Moses Orinda, the CRS Project Manager – Health, announced an end-of-cycle review meeting after five cycles to ensure successful implementation of the SMC campaign and technical support for malaria reduction.
One of the lead researchers, Prof Diana Menya of Moi University said that the findings of any SMC research in Turkana that would be published will be geared towards informing national policy and other counties on SMC interventions.
The participants were given their input to improve the tools and a sub-county taskforce team was selected to make the suggested changes. The tools will later be scaled up to other sub-counties.
The tools include children’s record cards, data summary forms, facility-level data summaries, score sheets, referral forms, job aids, suspected adverse drug reaction reporting forms, stock control cards, and daily movements of SP+AQ for children aged 3-59 months per team.
By Peter Gitonga
