RAPID ACCESS EXPANSION (RAcE) PROGRAMME MULTI-COUNTRY DISSEMINATION MEETING
Rapid Access Expansion Project (RAcE) and its ace team had a multi-country dissemination meetin g thus held from 24-27 October at Transcorp, Abuja aimed at sharing evidence generated by the RAcE programme to help countries to catalyse scale-up of high-quality, national the integrated community case management of childhood diseases (iCCM) iCCM programmes to reduce child mortality.
The project aims to increase access to treatment for malaria, pneumonia, and diarrheal disease among children under 5 years old through scaled-up integrated community case management (iCCM) programme in five countries—Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, and Nigeria in 6 implementation sites (including Abia State, Niger State, Tanganyika Province).In these countries, 8420 iCCM community health workers have been trained and have diagnosed and treated over 7.1 million cases of malaria, pneumonia and diarrhoea.
In Nigeria, The RAcE iCCM Project in November 2013, and is implemented in Abia and Niger States. In Abia State from November 2014 till date, the RAcE iCCM project has been implemented by the Abia State Ministry of Health (SMoH) with the Abia State Primary Healthcare Development Agency (ABSPHCDA) in partnership with Society for Family Health (SFH) and with funding from Global Affairs Canada through the World Health Organization (WHO).
So far 1,351 community-oriented resource persons (CORPs) have been trained in Abia State and are implementing the cost-effective iCCM intervention in 15 iCCM-eligible LGAs RAcE project has been increasing coverage of diagnosis, treatment, and referral services for these 3 major causes of childhood mortality in hard-to-reach areas in Nigeria.
At the dissemination each country shared their iCCM sustainability roadmap development initiative, the results of operational research and program learnings from RAcE supported countries. Also, delegates of each country shared their iCCM implementation experience, household survey and final evaluation results to inform and influence national policies and programmes in RAcE countries and beyond.
Aside from the delegates of the five countries, also in attendance were NGOs (Save the Children, International Rescue Committee, Malaria Consortium, World Vision, Society for Family Health); Donors (Global Affairs Canada, WHO, USAID, Gates Foundation, UNICEF); and Academia, ICF, HERA, Media, others.
By: Ugo Enebeli
