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Latest News Interview with mme zara al fadil head of health facility mailao chad

Interview with Mme Zara Al-Fadil: Head of Health Facility Mailao (Chad)

23 December 2016

This year marks the end of SMC implementation in seven countries across the Sahel through the ACCESS-SMC project, funded by UNITAID. During the past two years Mme Zara Al-Fail, head of a health facility in Mailao, has witnessed first hand the impact the scale up of SMC has had. To mark this occasion and give our readers a different perspective, we sat down with midwife Zara Al-Fadil to interview her on her thoughts about SMC.

ACCESS-SMC: Where do you work?

Mme Al-Fadil:  Health Centre in Mailao.

ACCESS-SMC: How long have you worked here?

Mme Al-Fadil:  Two years.

ACCESS-SMC: What do your patients tell you about SMC?

Mme Al-Fadil: The acceptability is very high. Community members want it. Almost nobody refuses it, and when someone refuses it and I explain what SMC is and what it does, they accept it. People only refuse when they do not understand what SMC is.

ACCESS-SMC: Do you get many referrals during SMC cycles?

Mme Al-Fadil: We get very few referrals, and very few suspected Adverse Events and malaria cases.

ACCESS-SMC: You have experience of SMC with hard tablets (2015) and with dispersible (2016) – is there a difference do you think?

Mme Al-Fadil: There is a big difference. Dispersible is so much easier to administer, it is much faster and the children do not vomit.

ACCESS-SMC: Do you see a difference in cases at your health facility?

Mme Al-Fadil:  Yes, I see a big difference. We have smaller numbers of children with malaria. We also have smaller number of children with minor adverse events this year with dispersible – 12 cases compared to 40 in 2015.

ACCESS-SMC: What do you want to see for the future?

Mme Al-Fadil: I want SMC to continue, but please revise the age of eligibility so that we can protect children up to 10 as well. I would also like to have one glass, or container per child, and not one to share for the whole village.

 

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