The GSK grants have been awarded following a review of proposals submitted by not-for-profit organisations and national malaria control programmes in malaria-affected African countries. The funding, which runs for three years, targets behavioural development programmes that will benefit whole communities and particularly target those most vulnerable to malaria - young children and pregnant women.
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Malaria Dialogue Education in Credit With Education.
Freedom From Hunger, will drive a multi-country programme in Ghana, Benin, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Togo. Using their proven Credit With Education approach of linking education and learning with the provision of savings and credit facilities for very low income women, they will develop a malaria education curriculum that will reach 500,000 people over three years.
Freedom from Hunger's president, Christopher Dunford, Ph.D. said, "This grant is a real breakthrough for Freedom from Hunger. For years our partner organisations, especially in Africa, have been asking for a malaria education module. Now we have what we need to get on with the job. With funding from GSK, we have formed a multi-country partnership in five West African countries to fight one of the leading killers of children."
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Behaviour Promotion for Malaria Prevention and Treatment.
Plan Sudan and the National Malaria Administration of Sudan, through a behavioural development and advocacy programme, are aiming to reduce the prevalence of malaria from 35% to 20% by 2005 in 372 communities along the western bank of the White Nile River in White Nile State. The total population of the communities is in excess of 671,000.
Marie Staunton, Plan UK's Chief Executive, says, "Every year, 35,000 Sudanese people die of malaria, many of them children. GSK's funding will enable Plan to support Sudan's Roll Back Malaria programme to cut the rate of infection and death from malaria by half within eight years."
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Uganda Malaria Partnership Programme.
Uganda's National Malaria Control Programme together with AMREF Uganda as the lead implementer, proposed a community-based programme aimed at reducing mortality and morbidity from malaria in pregnant women and children under five in three of Uganda's 56 districts. The programme will reach more than 780,000 people including around 163,000 under fives and also involves the Uganda Red Cross Society, Africare and the Communication for Development Foundation Uganda.
Vincent Oketcho, Country Director, AMREF Uganda, says, "This award enhances partnership between the NGO sector and the government of Uganda in developing and implementing interventions to address priority health problems such as malaria, and provides a unique opportunity for a tripartite collaboration between NGOs, government and GSK."
"GSK is committed to playing a significant role in improving the health of under-served communities. We have a dedicated research facility for diseases of the developing world and we are the only company developing new treatments and vaccines for all three of the WHO priority diseases - HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria. We also offer all of our antimalarial and antiretroviral medicines at not-for-profit, preferential prices in sub-Saharan Africa and Least Developed Countries," says Dr Richard South, director of GSK's HIV and malaria community partnership programmes. "But we also recognise that drugs and vaccines by themselves are not enough, whatever the price, which is why we developed the African Malaria Partnership. Over the next three years, our partners will reach nearly two million people with the aim of improving their understanding of malaria and strengthening their responses both through preventive measures such as the use of insecticide-treated bednets and timely and appropriate treatment of young children and pregnant women."
GlaxoSmithKline - one of the world's leading research-based pharmaceutical and healthcare companies - is committed to improving the quality of human life by enabling people to do more, feel better and live longer. For company information and further information on the African Malaria Partnership, visit GSK on the World Wide Web at www.gsk.com.
Editors' notes
The GlaxoSmithKline African Malaria Partnership
The GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) African Malaria Partnership (AMP) is the company's community partnership programme specifically supporting malaria control. It is one of a number of GSK community partnership initiatives focused on the developing world that address critical health issues such as HIV/AIDS (Positive Action), the elimination of lymphatic filariasis, and personal hygiene and sanitation education (PHASE). AMP's aim is the promotion and development of effective malaria control behaviours in African communities.
Although malaria is present throughout the tropical regions of the world, Africa has been chosen as the focus for the programme because the greatest disease burden and the vast majority of malaria deaths occur on this continent.
US$1.5 million in grants will be shared between the three programmes over three years with the aim of 'kick-starting' the scale-up of effective interventions as part of a concerted effort to reduce the burden of malaria in affected communities. The objective is that this 'kick-start' funding will be leveraged to maximum advantage by attracting additional funding and commitment for subsequent wider scaling-up and/or replication elsewhere.
The three programmes that will receive AMP grants were chosen from 45 outline proposals submitted to GSK. A panel comprising both GSK and external professionals with relevant skills and experience made the selection based upon proposals submitted to GSK and assessments by an independent consultant. The selections were based on a number of criteria that included innovation, partnership, targeting need, anticipated impact and sustainability.
Organisation: Freedom From Hunger
Programme: Malaria Dialogue Education in Credit With Education
Malaria Dialogue Education in Credit With Education
Freedom from Hunger, in partnership with six West African financial institutions, will develop and disseminate a malaria education curriculum as part of its existing and successful Credit With Education programme in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali & Togo. Developed and implemented with a grant from GSK of approximately $500,000, this curriculum will reach half-a-million community members over the next three years. The programme aims to improve prevention, early detection and appropriate treatment of malaria in the home and to stimulate demand for better malaria prevention and treatment services from local providers (private and public) by creating better-informed consumers of health care who can demand better services. GSK's grant will be matched by a USAID grant for institutional capacity building and expansion of the programme.
Freedom From Hunger
Founded as Meals for Millions in 1946, Freedom from Hunger has 56 years of experience in the fight against chronic hunger and poverty. FFH's programmes focus on low-income women from rural areas and work in partnership with indigenous organisations to develop innovative solutions to increase household food security and health.
Credit With Education
Credit with Education has been FFH's strategy for the last 12 years. It is an integrated package of financial services and health and business education directed to very poor women. This financially sustainable programme provides very poor women with two powerful and flexible resources: money and information. Credit with Education is now reaching more than 217,000 women in 15 countries with 25 collaborating organisations.
Organisation: Plan Sudan
Programme: Behaviour Promotion for Malaria Prevention and Treatment
Behaviour Promotion for Malaria Prevention and Treatment
With a $500,000 grant from GlaxoSmithKline, this programme seeks to reduce the morbidity and mortality rates of malaria in Sudan. This is to be achieved largely through the promotion of behaviours and practices that are conducive to malaria prevention and treatment at both the local and national level. The local level target area comprises 372 communities along the Western bank of the White Nile River in White Nile State. The key activities to be implemented over the three year period include: advocacy for effective malaria prevention and treatment, the establishment and strengthening of effective malaria-control networks and partnerships, raising of awareness levels of measures to prevent and treat the disease, improving the quality of related health services and the establishment of an effective community-based system of prevention and treatment.
The key target groups are community members, in particular, pregnant women, mothers with children under 5 years of age, and school age children, health workers, as well as government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) at the national level. In addition to Plan and the National Malaria Administration, partners at the local level will be involved in the implementation of activities in order to access a wide resource of skills and experience and in an effort to achieve maximum positive impact and sustainability.
Plan Sudan & Plan International
Plan Sudan is an affiliate of Plan International, a leading international, child focused development organisation. It supports development interventions in five domains - health, education, habitat, livelihood and building relationships between developing and developed countries. Plan's programmes cover 45 countries and benefit around 6 million children in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Plan and its local partners seek to reduce the social and economic inequalities that negatively impact a child's development in order that children have the opportunity to participate, influence and benefit fully from their society. The Convention on the Rights of the Child guides Plan's work and Plan regards children as legitimate development agents.
Organisation: AMREF Uganda
Programme: Uganda Malaria Partnership Programme
Uganda Malaria Partnership Programme
With a $500,000 AMP grant, the Uganda Malaria Partnership Programme (UMPP) will target three of Uganda's 56 districts, aiming to reduce mortality and morbidity from malaria in children under five years of age and pregnant women. The programme will promote home-based treatment of malaria fevers (HBMF) in under-fives with pre-packaged unit-dose anti-malarials, the use of insecticide treated nets (ITNs) by both pregnant women and children under five, and intermittent presumptive treatment (IPT) of malaria in pregnancy.
The UMPP will use strategically designed behaviour change communication approaches, including community-based interventions, advocacy through local community leadership networks, and multi-media approaches. UMPP will kick start these interventions in districts representing different stages of malaria control programme implementation. In one district, community-based distribution of anti-malarials for under-fives is already underway; in another district community-based IMCI is being implemented but anti-malarial distribution has not yet begun; and in one newly formed district no community-based child health initiatives have yet begun. With the active involvement of the District Health Services, UMPP activities will be fully integrated into annual district health plans to ensure sustainability. A consortium of four NGOs (AMREF, URCS, Africare and CDFU) will implement UMPP in collaboration with District Health Services under the overall guidance and supervision of the Malaria Control Programme of the Ministry of Health (MCP).
AMREF
AMREF is the leading implementing organisation in the UMPP. It is an independent, international, non-profit organisation whose mission is to empower the disadvantaged people in Africa to enjoy better health. AMREF has its headquarters in Nairobi and was founded in 1957. There are country offices in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and South Africa, field offices in Mozambique and Ethiopia and major programmes in Southern Sudan, Somalia and Rwanda.
AMREF has three core strategies: capacity building, operations research and advocacy. AMREF's approach places emphasis on developing, testing and evaluating methodologies and systems that are appropriate, relevant, affordable and effective.
