The effectiveness of the Competence Approach in the struggle against Malaria

Every Mothers Club chooses a name for itself, which must be approved by the Red Cross. In Djangou (Savanes Region), the club chose to call itself ‘Monlebde’ which means ‘change of attitude’.

In all of these clubs, the most important change has been the awareness that malaria is a disease brought by mosquitoes, and not the result of witchcraft.

An elderly women remembers, “Before, at five months of pregnancy, we did not go to the health center. The husband would visit the sorcerer and we would sacrifice a hen to the ancestors to protect the foetus. Nowadays, mortality has dramatically gone down because women go for their ante-natal visits and use bednets. Thanks to the Mothers Club, they now understand that the sorcerer does not cure malaria.”

And they decide to act. In Djangou, in the far north of the country, the Action Plan of the Mothers Club states what they will do in November

• home visits to encourage people to dig a cesspool sink to drain waste water
• provide information on the right way to set up bednets
• follow up on the effective use of the bednets
• information and counseling meetings for pregnant women

Adelassissi Aremu, Regional Red Cross Coordinator for the Savanes Region, bases his activities around the Mothers’Clubs. “The Red Cross is present in nearly all 400 villages of this region. This means that there are 16,000 women with whom we are building a real force in society."

(Read the full text)