Binga And Kariba Malaria Projects

 

Binga and Kariba are two districts in Zimbabwe which lie along the shores of Lake Kariba in the north of Zimbabwe, with Binga (No 1 in the map) considered to be one of the worst affected malaria districts in the country.

 

Together with Save the Children Fund (UK), Malair (Pvt) Ltd worked in Binga (1994 to 2000) and Kariba (1997-2000) to have a community based malaria control programme. The programme worked on the basis that communities can control malaria at very little cost and therefore the project gave skills to the communities to eliminate mosquitoes and therefore malaria from the places they lived.

 

The programme worked with primary school children and village communities. In the case of primary schools, children were asked to clean their environment as part of their regular school cleaning activities. In this case, the school children were sent out once a week from the school for a distance of about one kilometre (about fifteen minutes walk) in all directions. One their return to the school the children were expected to search out every mosquito breeding site and destroy it. They were also requested to do similar activities at their homes. A similar approach was used for communities where community volunteers would destroy all the mosquito breeding sites within the area.

 

Both school children and communities utilized a number of malaria control strategies which included larviciding (spray pumps and insecticides supplied by the programme), environmental control (clearing weeds, deepening edges of pools etc) and use of fish. The programme also worked with the Malaria Self Help Project to encourage people to use treated mosquito nets.

 

As this was a community based intervention, results were very variable depending on a number of factors, but where communities were motivated, extremely good results were achieved. In one school in Siabuwa, it was possible to sleep outside during the malaria season without a single mosquito bite. In another instance, during a massive malaria outbreak in 1996, a local Environmental Health Technician affectively controlled malaria in the Muchesu area of Binga with only the aid of the community and larval control.

 

From this page you can down load all documents relating to this programme including KAP studies, manuals used for health workers and teachers and all six monthly reports. Also included are two reports from Gokwe District at Sassame Mission where a similar project was carried out.

Documents To Download

 

·         Binga Initial Report 1994

·         KAP Study 1995

·         Binga Final Report 1995

·         Binga Mid Year Report 1996

·         Binga Final Report 1996

·         Binga and Kariba Mid Year Report 1997

·         Binga and Kariba Final Report 1997

·         Health Workers Malaria Manual

·         Teachers Malaria Manual

·         Gokwe Sassame Report 1995

·        Gokwe Sassame Report 1996

 

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