SUCCESS STORIES

Martha

One Rural District’s Fight Against Malaria

In rural villages like those in the Mpigi District, just an hour drive from Kampala, getting bed nets into the hands of those who need them most requires an extraordinary mobilization.

The command center for the distribution campaign is a small, filing cabinet lined room that also serves as the town council office for the Mpigi District. Here, on a weekday afternoon, Martha, the council’s leader, is reviewing piles of paperwork from the first free insecticide-treated net (ITN) distribution campaign in her rural district, a collaborative effort of the Mpigi Town Council and Project Hunger/Uganda, with funding from AFFORD and the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI).

“We used local drug distributors to help us target the needy families – those with children under five years old, pregnant mothers, or the ones that came in often for fever medications,” Martha explained. “We also provided training for the drug distributors and then did a house-to-house survey and used local radio to get the word out about the net distribution program.”

“After the survey was complete, we set a date for the mothers in the village to come in and bring immunization cards for their children. We got a good turnout for this activity and this let us introduce the nets as a way to reduce malaria in their homes. We did demonstrations and gave everyone educational materials,” explained Martha.

The materials, also produced by AFFORD and funded by PMI, are designed so women can share malaria prevention information with family and friends after they return home and have a tangible reminder of how to hang and care for the nets. In just under four weeks, the Mpigi Town Council distributed 3,500 nets with another 2,000 on the way.

Down a narrow, rutty, dirt road from the Town Council Office, sits the Nama Village, a community of modest mud brick houses set among small plots of vegetables and other lush vegetation. Standing outside the only door to her home, Nassaka Topia holds her one-month-old daughter Nabwata, while three-year-old son Seguja pulls at her skirt.

The family received their first bed net during the recent distribution campaign. “When I received the net I was so happy because I had always wanted one for my family but we couldn’t afford it. I am so thankful,” said Nassaka. “Malaria was such a problem for my family that our local health center listed us as chronic. But now there is a big difference since we started using the net.”

Nassaka and her husband have seven children, the older ones attend school and her husband spends his days in the small fields where he farms. Nassaka sends thanks to all the people who made the help possible and shyly admits they still need more help to protect the entire family.