Thoughts from the Last Mile
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Trial and Error
VillageReach strives to be a learning organization. We are trying to increase access to healthcare in countries where the roads are impassable, electricity and cell phone networks are intermittent – if they exist at all, half the population is illiterate[1], and almost 10% of children don’t live to see their first birthday[2]. It’s not easy, [...]
Understanding the Barriers to Maternal and Child Health in Kwitanda
VillageReach recently conducted a maternal and neonatal health needs assessment in Kwitanda, Malawi in order to understand the barriers (actual and perceived) to accessing quality maternal and neonatal health services in the community. After three years of building infrastructure, making connections in the community, and demonstrating success in improving child health outcomes, particularly for [...]
December 1, 2011: World AIDS Day!
Around the world, HIV remains one of the world’s foremost infectious killers. Despite the fact that it may take 10-15 years for HIV to digress to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), collectively HIV and AIDS are responsible for the deaths of more than 25 million people in the past thirty years. Infecting almost 3 million people [...]
GAVI to Support Vaccines in Mozambique
Every year, more than 1.4 million children die from pneumonia, accounting for more than 18% of deaths in children under-five.
Pneumonia can be caused by viruses, bacteria, or fungi and is a type of acute respiratory infection that affects the lungs and limits oxygen intake in infected children. Streptococcus pneumoniae – or pneumococcal disease – [...]
Changing the Nature of Diagnosis in Last Mile Communities
To date, malaria treatment in most endemic countries has been based on presumptive treatment. This means that any febrile child under five years of age is immediately prescribed antimalarial medication, based on the assumption that they are likely to have malaria. When lab tests were costly and rarely available, this policy undoubtedly saved countless lives. [...]
Engineers, International Development & Social Enterprise: “Where are the customers?”
Interesting series of proposals and exchanges coming out of the first gathering of IEEE’s Global Humanitarian Conference this week in Seattle … IEEE has committed to making this an annual event, so look for their planning updates for next fall.
I was speaking on a panel about the nexus of technology, global development and social enterprise [...]
Developing a Vision and Roadmap for Logistics Management Information Systems in Zambia
In Zambia, the Ministry of Health is developing a new information system for collecting and managing the data needed from the service delivery point to inform the procurement, management and distribution of medical commodities. VillageReach, in partnership with PATH, is working with the MOH and its partners to develop a vision and roadmap for logistics [...]
2011 Kwitanda Community Health Evaluation
VillageReach recently completed an annual evaluation of its Kwitanda Community Health Project. The results of the evaluation indicate that VillageReach is making great progress toward meeting its goals to reduce incidence of malaria and diarrhea and to increase treatment of malaria and diarrhea in the Kwitanda community.
Highlights of the evaluation include:
Household net ownership [...]
Intangible Resource
Remember the days when you had to go to a library to look something up? What if you had to walk there? And it took three hours. And the book you wanted was checked out. Technology has brought so much to our lives that we sometimes forget the value of information.
In my work, I’ve realized [...]
HOW DO WE KNOW WHEN IT’S WORKING?
“The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple”
Oscar Wilde
I’m an MPH graduate student and a recent addition to the VillageReach team as a summer Health Systems Group intern. When I was asked to come up with some ideas for how to evaluate active case finding for VillageReach’s new tuberculosis [...]