Integrated Health Campaigns Could Hasten Attainment Of MDGs

Written by Henry Neondo at Africa Science News Service

Friday, 03 September 2010

Provision of multi-disease prevention packages that contain preventive health commodities has proved effective in reducing morbidity and mortality in rural areas as examples from Kenya shows.

Appearing in a report published in PLoS ONE on August 24, the results summarizes work on “Rapid Implementation of an Integrated Large-Scale HIV Counseling and Testing, Malaria, and Diarrhea Prevention Campaign in Rural Kenya.”

Specifically, the report in the publication for peer-reviewed scientific and medical research evaluates the effectiveness of the CarePack® integrated prevention demonstration.

The CarePack® test was a one-week campaign implemented in the Lurambi district of Western Kenya in September 2008.

It set out to determine if an integrated disease prevention campaign in a low resource setting can increase coverage, equity and efficiency in controlling high burden infectious diseases.

Thirty-one temporary sites in strategically dispersed locations offered HIV counseling and testing, an insecticide-treated bed net, water filters, condoms and, for those testing positive for HIV, a three-month supply of co-trimoxazole and referral for follow-up care and treatment.

The CarePack® campaign was implemented as a public-private partnership between Vestergaard Frandsen, the company that conceived of and funded it, and the Kenyan Ministry of Health, the CDC and NGO CHF International.

According to the PLoS ONE report, 47,311 people participated in the campaign with a 96% uptake of the multi-disease preventive package.  Of these, 99.7% were tested for HIV; 80% had previously never tested; 4% of those tested were positive for HIV/AIDS.

HIV/AIDS, diarrheal diseases, and malaria are the largest public health killers in Africa.  “Prevention and treatment of these diseases has posed enormous challenges, and we simply must find better ways to overcome these challenges and save lives,” said Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen, CEO of the company that bears his name.  The need for a solution provided him with impetus to conceive the CarePack® model.

. But, prior to the CarePack® campaign, this type of integrated intervention was only offered to people living with HIV, and had not been provided on a mass scale to people without HIV.

The report in PLoS ONE states that the CarePack® campaign presents an operational model for reaching the magnitude of HCT coverage required for many national goals and may help control the HIV epidemic.

It notes that multi-disease integrated campaigns represent an important and effective modality to augment routine health services if we are to achieve rapid, high and equitable coverage of multiple health challenges.

The report concludes that this model could be adapted to other underserved communities, and may well be one of the fastest approaches to achieve national health objectives set out in the Millennium Development Goals.