Since 1996, DAPP Malawi has been actively improving livelihoods and communities in need across Malawi through its social development projects.
DAPP is implementing 16 projects within education, health, agriculture and community development in 24 districts that span across the country's three regions
DAPP HOPE IN SCHOOLS PROJECT ORIENTS YOUTH ON SRHR
Development Aid from People to People (DAPP) Malawi in partnership with the National AIDS Commission (NAC) is implementing a Hope in Schools project called Creating Space for Adolescent Girls and Young Women (AGYW) to Access Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights services which aims at promoting adolescent girls and young women to be assertive and understand their rights when making reproductive health related decisions. The project is being implemented in two districts of Mulanje and Thyolo in the southern region of Malawi targeting adolescent girls and young women in private secondary schools and tertiary education institutions.
Youth that attended the orientations
Youth targeted in the project
On the 15th of May, the project carried out orientation for community youth clubs to strengthen the provision of comprehensive youth friendly health services in the youth clubs. The club members were also oriented on HIV/AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI) prevention; club management; adolescent growth and development; and access to youth friendly health services. This orientation will enable the club members to assist their fellow young people in finding solutions to issues regarding sexual and reproductive health and rights services. The Thyolo district Youth Officer Doreen Mbendela was one of the facilitators during the orientation exercises. Mbendela recommended DAPP for implementing the project which is encouraging youth to seek health services. She urged the youth club members to pass on the knowledge to their fellow youth so they can also benefit. The orientation was attended by 81 youth club members with 60 being female and 21 male. The project is targeting 600 adolescent girls and young women in 10 tertiary education institutions and 30 private secondary schools who are benefitting directly and 6000 indirect beneficiaries in Mulanje and Thyolo districts.
“We used to register 15 diarrhoea cases in a month but now we rarely hear that a learner has contracted the sanitation related disease,” recollects Odeta Beleko, a standard 3 teacher at Mlumbwira full primary school in the area of Traditional Authority Chitukula in Lilongwe.
DAPP Malawi through Let Children Stay in School (LCSS) project with funding from the Roger Federer Foundation introduced the sanitation and hygiene programme at Mlumbwira full Primary School in 2015 with an aim of reducing cases of learner absenteeism due to illnesses that comes with lack of sanitation and hygiene. Through the programme, DAPP encouraged the school to use locally available resources to make hand washing facilities. Considering the high incidences of diarrhoea the school was registering and knowing the importance of having hygiene facilities, the school did not hesitate to initiate these facilities using tree poles and empty plastic bottles. Each facility is made by erecting two poles, with another polefixed across the top of the two poles. A plastic bottle filled with clean water is hanged at waist level of a grown up person together with a container of laundry soap. These hand washing facilities are visibly seen at each door-step of every classroom at Mlubwira Primary School.
A teachers shows a learner how to wash hands with soap
A bottle of water suspended outside a classroom for washing hands
“Learners who visit the toilet wash their hands before entering my class. When I notice that a learner has visited the toilet and enters the class without washing hands, I ask that learner to go outside to do so. Once the pupil washes their hands, they are then allowed to enter the classroom. But for little ones who cannot manage to wash hands on their own, I help them.” Says Beleko. Beleko who has been teaching at Mlumbwira for 3 years says her learners are now used to practising hygiene and that the school has managed to reduce cases of diarrhoea. “Things have improved now. Before installing these hand washing facilities, diarrhoea among my learners was common but now the incidences have reduced by half. I teach my learners to always wash their hands with soap after visiting the toilet because one can catch germs while in the toilet, so they wash their hands thoroughly with soap to let those germs go away.”Concludes Beleko
Today, April 7, Development Aid from People to People (DAPP) Malawi joins the international world in commemorating the World Health Day. The day is an initiative spearheaded by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Each year, the day is given a theme to highlighta subject of major importance to global health. This year’s theme is “Universal health coverage: everyone, everywhere”, It focuses on ensuring that everyone, everywhere can access essential quality health services without facing financial hardship.
HIV and AIDS, Tuberculosis (TB) and malnutrition are examples of the diseases that require global attention to ensure universal global health coverage is achieved.In Malawi, according to the National TB Control Programme, there were an estimated 17,000 cases of TB in the year 2015, and approximately 54% of these were HIV positive.As of 2017, The HIV prevalence rate was 8.2 percent, according to the Ministry of Health. Malnutrition is also a widespread problem in Malawi, particularly amongst pregnant and lactating mothers and their infants.The UnitedNations Children’s Fund indicates that around 46 percent of children under five are stunted and 21 percent are underweight. These diseases are so devastating because among others, they reverse decades of improvement in life expectancy, educational progress and economic growth. For instance, a World Bank report estimates that HIV and AIDS may reduce Gross Domestic Product growth by 1 percent a year in some sub-Saharan African countries, due to the continuing loss of skilled and unskilled workers in the prime of life.
DAPP Member Of Staff Testing A Couple For HIV
DAPP Field Officer Distributing Food Items To TB Patients In Thyolo District
Recognising these challenges, DAPP Malawi has worked with the Malawi Government since 1998 to ensure healthy lives and promote the well-being of Malawians by implementing projects aimed to fight TB, HIV and Aids, Malaria and Malnutrition. DAPP began its work to tackle the HIV/AIDS epidemic in 1998 through itsHOPE project which established community HIV resource hubs and activity centers for everyone in a given community. Building on this work, DAPP launched a Total Control of the Epidemic (TCE) programme in 2007 to combat and prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria. TCE combinedcounseling, field-testing, education, and community mobilization approaches. It reached more than 1.400.000 people with HIV information and tested 500.000 people for HIV. The organisation also implemented the Total Control – TBprogram in the Mining Sector in 3 districts; Chiradzulu, Phalombe and Neno. It aimed out to prevent the spread of Tuberculosis amongst key population namely; miners, ex–miners, their families and communities. The project aimed at increasing TB case finding amongst 15.000 mining sector key population and access to information on TB/ HIV and AIDS prevention, testing and counselling, care and treatment to presumptive TB patients. Currently, the organisation is implementing the Integrated HIV/TB Project in Thyolo district, Malawi which aims to prevent the spread of TB by identifying TB patients through microscopy, conducting HIV testing and ensuring care for those infected by TB. It has also scaled up its interventions in eliminating the epidemic in the districts of Chikwawa, Machinga and Zomba
Furthermore, the organisation supported the Government’s efforts to reduce child stunting and; maternal and child anaemia in Blantyre and Chiradzulu districts. This is achieved through enhancing maternal and child nutrition service delivery at community level and by strengthening existing local development committees.Since 2013, DAPP’s nutrition efforts have reached more than 400,000 people with information about food, nutrition and child feeding practices. On this World Health Day, DAPP Malawi pledges to continue supporting the Malawi Government in ensuringthat all Malawians can access essential quality health services in the areas of HIV and Aids, TB and Malnutrition without facing financial hardship through the continued development of innovative tools and approaches of eliminating the diseases.
The Development Aid from People to People (DAPP) Malawi participated in the World Tuberculosis (TB) Day commemoration which was organized by the Ministry of Health. The event took place on 24th March 2018 at Matenje Secondary School Ground, Traditional Authority Khombeza in Salima district. Every year, the 24th of March is set aside to raise community awareness about the global TB epidemic and efforts to eliminate the disease. This year’s event was presided by the Minister of Health and Population Honourable Atupele Muluzi under the theme “Wanted: Leaders for a TB- Free World. You can make history. End TB”.
Minister Of Health And Other Officials Being Briefed At DAPP Pavilion
Performances During The World TB Day Commemoration
The minister emphasized the crucial role everyone has in leading the elimination of TB, and the need for those in positions of authority to get serious about ending TB. “All of us are leaders in one way. Whether you are a person affected by TB or a caregiver, whether you work in government, academia, non-governmental organisation, civil society organisation or a media outlet. This year’s theme of the event calls on all of us to participate in ending TB,” he said. He also thanked all the developmental partners that support the fight against TB. “Let me recognise all partners that continue to support the ministry in our fight against TB,” Muluzi said. At the event, DAPP Malawi displayed a booth which was used to present to the minister, government officials, partners and members of the general public the organisation’s key interventions against TB and the important progress made in the fight against the disease. In fighting TB in Malawi, DAPP has worked closely with government since 2007. Currently, the organisation is implementing the Integrated HIV/TB Project in Thyolo district, Malawi with funding from Comic Relief via TB Alert UK. The project aims to prevent the spread of TB by identifying TB patients through microscopy, conducting HIV testing and ensuring care for those infected by TB. It adopts a community mobilization approach whereby the organisation conducts TB and HIV awareness through door to door visits. This increases the detection rate of TB and HIV and early referral arrangements for TB patients in designated and certified health facilities.
The organisation has also scaled up its interventions against the epidemic by implementing TB projects in Machinga, Chikwawa, Mangochi and Zomba.
Challenge TB is a 5-year USAID-funded global project whose main objective is to decrease TB mortality and morbidity in high burdened countries. KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation is implementing the project in Malawi, with focused activities in 15 districts. DAPP Malawi has partnered with KNCV to support the National TB Control Program to achieve the implementation of “FAST” (Finding TB cases Actively, Separating safely, and Treating effectively) strategies by the Malawi Ministry of Health in four district hospitals of Chikwawa, Machinga, Mangochi and Zomba Central Hospitals.
The project’s goal is to prevent, diagnose, treat TB and ensure treatment follow-up care is provided through a decentralized system of care with TB registration sites that have been established to support these services and have both diagnostic and treatment services in the same facility. The project aims to sustainably encourage respective districts to adopt the FAST strategy in the daily care of patients as an administrative measure of prevention of TB transmission. The partnership is for 9 months, from January to September 2018. DAPP Malawi and KNCV will enforce the FAST strategies in the four district hospitals with the involvement of the key management staff. Working hand-in-hand with healthcare workers, the implementation will enhance TB case finding among otherwise unsuspected TB patients, diagnose TB earlier among otherwise missed drug-susceptible TB patients and diagnose drug-resistant TB earlier among inadequately treated TB patients. Successful implementation of the FAST strategy will ensure that clients are diagnosed with TB and start receiving treatment in less than 7 days.
