In
April and May 2006, Mrs Maimouna Traoré, together with
150 other community-based volunteers from Mali Red Cross fought
the meningitis epidemic in her district of Kadiolo located in
the south-west of the country.
“During training sessions, we learned how to target beneficiaries,
how to conduct door to door visits and what messages we needed
to relay on the vaccination campaign and meningitis prevention,”
says Mrs Traoré.
As soon as the Ministry of Health declared the meningitis outbreak
in the Sikasso area, the Mali Red Cross appealed for support
to carry out a social mobilization campaign. In response the
International Federation allocated 27,000 CHF from its Disaster
Relief Emergency Fund (DREF).
In 2005, 24 out of 61 emergencies funded from the DREF were
in Africa. “The work of the Red Cross Red Crescent in
Africa has an important and significant role to play in preventing
the spread of highly infectious diseases such as cholera, yellow
fever and meningitis, but funding is hard to find”, says
Dr.Hakan Sandbladh, senior officer for health in emergencies
at the International Federation Secretariat. “Volunteers
and National Red Cross Red Crescent Society staff work directly
with the communities. They are the front line in advocating
and implementing preventive measures and practices.
The ministries of health and international organizations such
as the World Health Organization in fact rely on the Red Cross
Red Crescent societies to go this last mile in ensuring prevention
and a speedy response, which is essential,” he adds.
Like many other national societies from within West and Central
Africa region, the Mali Red Cross has been accompanying the
action of the Ministry of Health for years through surveillance,
identification of beneficiaries within the target groups, social
mobilization, and co-organisation of vaccine campaigns. The
Red Cross operates in areas that have been defined in advance
in the government plan of action for the outbreak of epidemics.
During the last nine months, Mali has witnessed three major
epidemics: yellow fever and cholera in the Kayes region in October
2005 and August 2005 respectively, and meningitis in Sikasso
in April 2006.
The need to respond to recurrent epidemics in different parts
of Mali has brought to 5,000 the number of community-based volunteers
who have been trained so far in social mobilization. “Those
volunteers make themselves easily available because they are
members of communities in which the activities take place”,
explains Dr. Diallo, Health Coordinator of the Mali Red Cross
during his monitoring mission in Kadiolo. “This campaign
lasted three weeks and now we can evaluate its impact,”
he adds.
Dr. Diallo met with forty of the volunteers in Kadiolo who submitted
their reports, including beneficiary lists, and exchanged experiences
and lessons learned. “We identified the 2,102 heads of
family whom the volunteers visited after close consultation
and planning with the village or local town leaders,”
he explains. After this and other similar meetings in other
communes, Dr. Diallo and his assistant Dr. Kany Makan, paid
visits to some of beneficiaries whose names were selected at
random from the reports, accompanied by the social mobilization
volunteer who had visited the selected family.
The Ouattara family was chosen for one of the visits. While
seasonal field work is keeping many of the adults away from
home, children are playing in the shade of the tree under the
supervision of one adult family member. The family has 12 members,
including six children above two years of age. This is the minimum
age for administering the meningitis vaccine.
“Mrs Traoré paid us a visit”, says Zabré
Ouattara indicating the social mobilization volunteer. “She
told us things about the fever, the rigid neck and the headaches
so we could recognize the disease. After her visit we all reported
to the health post and got the vaccine, free of charge,”
he adds.
Beside door-to-door visits, another good vehicle for the social
mobilization is radio. Bearing in mind that the poor electricity
coverage in the country, which stands at some 20% only, prevents
most people in Mali from watching television, radio remains
the most important media in the country and also in the region.
Therefore Mali Red Cross volunteers together with doctors and
nurses are often guests of the local radio stations through
which they spread health and hygiene messages and give as many
practical medical and health messages as possible. “These
are useful chats”, says Dr. Diallo, “and a good
way of passing on the word”.
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Ouattara
family members and their friends from the neighbourhood
enjoyed an anecdote told by Dr Kany Makan Sissoko, volunteer
of Mali Red Cross during his and Dr. Diallo’s monitoring
mission in the district of Kadiolo in June 2006. (p14527)
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A
beneficiary, Zabré Ouattara explains to Mali Red
Cross monitoring team of two, Dr Diallo and Dr Kany Makan
Sissoko what did she learned during the social mobilization
and meningitis vaccine campaign that was carried out by
150 volunteers in Kadiolo district, Sikasso region in
June 2006 after the outbreak of a meningitis epidemics.
(p14524)
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Mali
Red Cross: volunteer training in social mobilisation.
(p14526)
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