Central African Republic

How We Do It

Starting initially with 30, but gradually expanding to 60 community volunteers identified in collaboration with the local Ministry of Health (MoH) and village authorities, MENTOR trained and equipped these people to provide basic diagnostic, treatment and referral services for malaria and other common illnesses within their own communities. These malaria agents have been strategically situated in 59 villages and serving 180,000 people across the eight communes of Paoua Sous-prefecture. Today most families can normally reach their lifesaving help within 5kms. MENTORs community based approach dramatically increases access to malaria diagnostics and treatment. From January 2009 to June 2010, 80,754 people approached a malaria agent or a MENTOR supported health facility for assistance. Of these, 68.9% had confirmed malaria and received appropriate life saving treatment. During this same period, 437 severe malaria cases, including complications due to malnutrition, were referred by our malaria agents to Paoua hospital for inpatient treatment.
The network is supported and supervised by MENTOR and has because of its high level of impact and cost efficacy has been adopted by the MoH as a model to be rolled out by partners in other parts of the country to improve community access to basic health care.
Based on this programmes success in the north MENTIOR developed a partnership with UNICEF to support the national scale up of Long Lasting Insecticidal Nets (LLINs). The MENTOR Initiative is the Technical Advisor to the nationwide LLIN distribution campaign recently launched by UNICEF and the MoH. In this role we train partner groups within the MoH, NGOs and FBOs in standardized LLIN campaign planning, distribution techniques, malaria IEC, and LLIN monitoring and evaluation.
The MENTOR Initiative will continue to work in close collaboration with the National Malaria Control Programme as well as other partners in Malaria Control in rolling out this successful life saving strategy in the north, and expanding services to other highly vulnerable communities who's needs have yet to be met.