Senegal and beyond: Scaling integrated community based care to improve child health

In many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, community-based interventions historically have been provided by health workers and educators, who were trained and equipped to address specific diseases or conditions. Often the role of these workers has been limited to prevention and health promotion without the training or mandate to diagnosis and treat the leading causes of mortality among children. Senegal played a leading role in Africa in demonstrating how community-based delivery platforms can be leveraged to provide integrated prevention and treatment for pneumonia, malaria, diarrhea, acute undernutrition, and in some instances, the management of newborn illness. The U.S. played a critical role in working with the Government of Senegal and other partner countries, such as Nepal, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Madagascar, to test the feasibility of integrated community case management of child illness and to demonstrate that the approach could be replicated in countries with the collaboration of country partners.

Under GHI, the U.S. will continue to work with countries, as well as other bilateral donors and multilateral partners, such as the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO), to leverage U.S. malaria and maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH) funding to promote and evaluate integrated, community-based care that addresses the leading causes of mortality and morbidity among children. A retrospective evaluation to analyze the Senegalese experience from the pilot phase to national scale-up is underway. Findings from this study will inform the work of other countries in sub-Saharan Africa that look to community based approaches to overcome human resource shortages and improve child health equity.