Capacity Development
Overview:
Effective tools are available to control malaria successfully, and funding to implement programmes is increasing. The benefits of this favourable environment will not be enjoyed unless much greater attention is given to short-term and long-term capacity development. Capacity is a combination of human resource capacity and infrastructure and systems capacity. Capacity development includes not only training but also follow-up and supervision after training and ensuring that trained staff are motivated, supplied with the tools for their job and encouraged to stay in post. While human resource development for malaria is part of broader health sector human resource strategies, it cannot be left out when planning specifically for malaria control. Whether this entails advocacy across the sector for better conditions for health workers or more malaria-specific skills development, those responsible for malaria control need to include it in their plans, and work with other parts of the system to ensure the most efficient approaches to develop capacity.
In order to process the far greater workload needed to increase many times the scale of malaria control operations, it is useful to identify and exploit opportunities to use capacity beyond the public sector health system, such as civil society organisations, non-government organisations, private sector and non-health sectors.
Certain skills needed for malaria control have been neglected in many places, so needs assessments followed by capacity development strategies are important. Some of these skills include management of finances, commodities and teams, vector control and evaluation.
Much can be achieved by addressing not only the capacity of service providers but also the users, providing them the information they need both for community initiatives and also to know what to demand from providers.
Key points:
Capacity development for malaria control is absolutely vital to scale up a country's response to both endemic and epidemic malaria. It builds on the current capability in countries at all levels to prevent and control malaria through:
- Provision of an enabling environment (e.g., political commitment; development and implementation of appropriate recruitment and career policies; provision of facilities and resources; strengthened training institutions);
- Intensification of training and retraining of personnel;
- Technical support mechanisms (e.g., information, communication and supply systems to support trained personnel, supervision, monitoring and evaluation).
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Programme Activities: The Malaria Consortium has been supporting capacity development through health system strengthening in East and Southern Africa, including Zambia, Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Mozambique, providing management support to the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) partnership in Uganda and running a resource centre for the East Africa sub-Regional RBM Network (EARN) to support national malaria control efforts in the region. The Malaria Consortium has worked with several countries to assist development of comprehensive national malaria control strategic plans. Our research programmes, such as COMDIS, recognise and contribute to developing local research capacity as well as developing capacity of implementers to use research effectively. We are now also developing approaches to link malaria control with control of other communicable diseases. [CLOVER and Scaling up in Sudan] |
References:
- Meek, S., Edmondson, J., Carroll, D. (2001) Global campaign to eradicate malaria . British Medical Journal 328: 571.
- Strategic Plan for Capacity Development for RBM. Roll Back Malaria.