Jasmina Petrovic in Kadiolo
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”.