The effectiveness of the Competence Approach in the struggle against Malaria

One word comes up again and again in conversations with facilitators and programme managers : sustainability.

Everyone remembers short-lived information campaigns, public awareness actions with no durability, health initiatives that come to an end with the end of outside funding. And you can hear this sentences in West African countries : “Many assistance programmes are two years long. Then, the partner goes back to its country. But the mosquitoes remain!”

"Our main concern is the sustainability of struggle against malaria,” stresses Dr Thomas Sukwa, WHO representative in The Gambia. "This is the reason why we run awarness campaign towards the children, the youngsters. This way, we hope to have, in the near future, a generation of young adults with a real Malaria Competence.”

NSGA Programme Director Kevin Hughes, insists : « We do not want to build up dependancy. On the contrary we want the communities to get ownership of the necessary competence to make malaria step back. And this is where the power of Self Assessment stands : ownership”.

Mrs Adama Jagne Sonko, Deputy Programme Manager in the National Malaria Control Programme is confident that if resources are continuously available to scale up interventions and consolidate the gains : « The Gambia will soon reach the level of control of malaria. And will move towards pre elimination. Our target for 2010 is pre-erlimination, and then elimination.”

And as he was bidding us goodbye, WHO Dr Thomas Sukwa, called out to us, "We will roll back malaria to the ocean !"

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