Health: RVCP strengthening fight against malaria

RWANDA Village Concept Project (RVCP), a multidisciplinary project run by students and local community leaders is in campaign geared at improving standards of living in rural areas. The move by RVCP is also to encourage self-reliance and preach against the idea of depending on handouts. Over half of humanity lives are at risk of malaria disease and an estimated 500 million clinical cases of malaria annually are particularly in Africa. This has been manifested and proved by the world health organization that an African child dies of malaria every after 30 seconds. Malaria accounts 40% of all consultations in health centers and is the main cause of morbidity and mortality in Rwanda. The contribution of Rwanda Village concept project (RVCP) that was founded and created by medical students through collaboration with the ministry of health helps in developing, planning and implementation of different malaria controls strategies which are mainly based on education of the community in huye town, Southern Province. Muhire Manzi, is the chairman of the malaria programme in RVCP. He says that this project works in four sub-sectors of Huye district; Nyakagezi, Rukira, Sovu and Muyogoro. According to him, 98 per cent of the population with in these villages was resettled by the 1994 genocide, leaving them in a stark situation of vulnerability. The living standards and the health conditions of the population were deteriorated considerably due to domestic crisis in Rwanda. He said as a result, many of the households are now headed by women and children basing on the baseline survey that was conducted in 2005. The needs from the assessment conducted showed that there are various needs apart from health that require strong interlink age and interdependencies. “However, health remains the central focus,” he added. The common diseases in the community are Malaria, diarrhea, respiratory tract infections, HIV/AIDS, and signs of malnutrition such as kwashiorkor. Many of these diseases are partly caused by deficient hygiene conditions such as contaminated water sources, lack of waste disposal systems, drinking untreated water and others to mention but a few. And the spread of these diseases is due to lack of information in the community as well due to the high poverty serving in the community preventing the community to get appropriate treatment and means of protection. Muhire revealed that the micro project aims at improving the health conditions of rural people by preventing and reducing the prevalence of malaria. He explained that the project also intend to improve access to prompt treatment. “This will be achieved by educating target communities, by strengthening Information, use of educative methods to the society and Communication activities at all level,” he stressed. Umukiza Clémentine lives in Rukira sector of Huye district and she is one of beneficiaries of anti malaria micro project run by the RVCP. She has a 4-year-old boy who had malaria infection problems before RVCP started working in place. She says that RVCP has provided with them essential tools to fight against the disease and that malaria disease is no longer attacking her and her four year old kid. She adds that RVCP work to provide interactive teaching sessions during which the participants are able to discuss the problems and give their contributions. “This has been done during a two-hour session per village, run by RVCP students in the villages and arranged in cooperation with the local leaders.” She said. The essential aspect of RVCP is the active participation of the community and adheres to the smart objectives. The project activities are participatory in their character, using participatory rural appraisal and participatory learning and action as major tools. Most planned activities have two components to their implementation. Educational aspect that require implementations of technical and non technical content. In the sector of health education, existing structures are included in the project. This enables to facilitate capacity building aspects of the previously trained health and other education staff in the community and avoiding duplication. Well established tools such as posters, leaflets, Information packs, flipcharts accompany regular activities like the on job trainings and sessions, home visits as well as Singular activities like workshops and campaigns. The project facilitate the training of new community health staff, as required and assure long term employment through close collaboration with local authorities. As RVCP’s focus is to educate and thus promote the implementation of prevention strategies by the villagers themselves, however due to a lack of income amongst a high proportion of the villagers this is largely unfeasible. Thus, RVCP identifies people living in the target community that are deemed the most vulnerable and distributes these nets to them at a subsidized rate. Ends