Malaria Competence

The Self Assessment framework is the centre of the Malaria Competence process. It is straighforward to use; it allows communities to understand the actions that they can take to deal with malaria. Through discussion, the community decides for itself the actions that they will take to improve their situation. And in turn, the community is encouraged to take further action by the success of the actions that they have taken. (See videos below.)

The Self Assessment framework lets you assess yourself on 14 Practices that lead to Malaria Competence. Here 'you' can be an individual, a community, a company or perhaps even a country. For each practice, you assess yourself at a level between Level 1 and Level 5. The Self Assessment framework then lets YOU decide in which areas you wish to improve and what you are going to do to make your plans a reality.

Here is the list of the 14 practices that we currently use in the Self Assessment.

1. Malaria is just a fact of life
2. Acknowledgement and recognition of malaria as a disease
3. Including the most vulnerable in our response to malaria.
4. Access to appropriate treatment in a timely fashion
5. Severe malaria
6. Prevention: ITN
7. Prevention:IRS
8. Prevention: IPT
9. Gender driven response
10. Learning and transfer
11. Measuring change
12. Adapting our response
13. Ways of deploying our own strength
14. Mobilising resources

In the Self Assessment framework, we assess ourself on each of the 14 practices. We assess ourself between Level 1 and Level 5 .

When we are at Level 5, our action is simply part of the normal way that we do things. It is the way that we behave when we are AIDS Competent. When we look at the description of our Dream for each practice that we did in the last module, we are giving a description of Level 5. When we are at Level 1, we know something about the practice but not enough to act effectively.

The Self Assessment framework for malaria contains a definition of each of the 5 levels for all 14 practices. For example, here is the definition of the 5 levels for the practice of 'Acknowledgement and recognition of malaria as disease'.

This framework allows a community to assess itself its level of competence in each of the 14 practices. This Self Assessment lets the community decide its capacity to deal with malaria. The Self Assessment naturally leads the community to decide on those areas in which it wants to improve and then to develop an Action Plan that will lead the village to

This link will open the current version of the Self Assessment framework for malaria on a separate page. We are certain that as we gain more experience in using the Self Assessment for malaria we will find ways to make improvements in the framework. We would very much welcome your comments based on your experience of using the Self Assessment.