Ethiopia

C-Change is working with the government of Ethiopia and the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) in the Oromia region to assist communities to develop community-based actions to combat the devastating effects of malaria.
 

Malaria Prevention

C-Change is engaging communities in Ethiopia’s Oromia region to carry out the Essential Malaria Actions using a mass media campaign, the Champion Community approach, and illustrated teaching tools. The EMAs are small, doable actions that a family can easily carry out to prevent malaria. They include sleeping under a net and giving priority to pregnant women and children under five, assisting the indoor spraying team when it comes to the community, going to the clinic at the first signs of fever, and taking all of the malaria medicine even if feeling better. The EMAs were field tested for reasonableness and resonance with Ethiopian families living in rural villages.

C-Change launched the malaria prevention campaign in August 2009 with a Training of Trainers (TOT) workshop, guiding attendees through objectives of the campaign and providing skills-building exercises on how to use the tools when making home visits with community groups. These trainers in turn train the Community Mobilization Committee (CMC) volunteers from participating kebeles, the smallest administrative unit in the Ethiopian government. CMC volunteers (at least half are women) work with community groups and at the schools to help carry out the actions that will prevent malaria. They use the tools that C-Change has developed, including the the EMA flipchart with basic information on malaria protection and control and the Malaria Protection Scorecards, to assist their efforts.
 

Malaria Prevention Sticker

The focal point of the malaria campaign is the Malaria Prevention Sticker, which families earn when they successfully carry out the four doable EMAs promoted by the campaign. CMC volunteers also use the Malaria Protection Scorecard when they conduct house-to-house visits and community group meetings to track progress. The Scorecard guides a family step-by-step towards carrying out the four doable actions and towards earning the Malaria Protection Sticker and helps families chart their own progress.

As each doable action is carried out, the family member and a CMC volunteer check the appropriate box and initial that the action has indeed been carried out. When families have earned a Malaria Protection Sticker, they affix it to their front door, where it serves as a reminder to other community families that this household is successfully combating malaria. These families are encouraged to mentor three other families. Mentoring is one of the benchmarks of a “Champion Community”—families and neighbors encouraging each other to succeed. When a community meets their goal for number of families with a Malaria Protection Sticker, the community is declared a “Champion Community.”

The malaria campaign follows the successful Message Harmonization Workshop for PMI partners, including local Ethiopian and international NGOs, that was hosted by C-Change and the Health Education Center of the Ministry of Health in Spring 2009 that introduced the concept of small doable actions and developed the EMAs.