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Story by Samy Rakotoniaina and Misa Rahantason

Malaria is one of the leading causes of mortality among children under five in Madagascar. Atsimo Andrefana is one of Madagascar’s regions most severely impacted by endemic malaria. More than half of the population in this region lives more than five kilometers from the nearest health facility, putting Community Health Volunteers (CHVs) on the front lines in the fight against malaria.

Retsilake is one of the 6,000 high-performing CHVs supported by the USAID-funded Accessible Continuum of Care and Essential Services Sustained (ACCESS) project. ACCESS is implemented by Management Sciences for Health (MSH), in partnership with a consortium of international and local organizations, and alongside Madagascar’s Ministry of Public Health. The project is partly funded by the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI).

Retsilake diagnosed and treated nearly 2,000 children from his village and the surrounding area during a particularly severe malaria outbreak in 2015. He understands the impacts of malaria on children's health and this keeps him motivated to serve his community.

Raian Amzad, a technical advisor with the DFID-funded Better Health in Bangladesh (BHB) project, and her colleagues took time away from their regular work to help Bangladesh’s central response to COVID-19. Here’s how the project and the country are handling the pandemic threat. 

Can you tell me about your recent work assignment related to COVID-19? What did your typical day look like?

On March 17, the Directorate General of Health Services opened a temporary Integrated Control Room for COVID-19 response. Fifteen different groups are working there. I was in one with other developmental partners.

The control room guides, supervises, and monitors the entire country in responding to COVID-19; facilitating meetings with donors; disseminating awareness messages and myth busters for the public; developing guidelines for the health workforce; and coordinating logistics, commodities, and media outreach. I have been engaged in all sorts of tasks, and it was enlightening to work so closely with the government health system. 

Originally published by Global Health NOW

COVID-19’s lethal invasion in late 2019 has turned the world inside out. Yet, another disease, tuberculosis, has been plaguing humans since the Upper Paleolithic era, some 20,000 years ago. In fact, many infection-prevention precautions promoted for the coronavirus—coughing etiquette, distancing, and hand washing—originated as TB-control measures in Victorian times. The COVID-19 response can draw on more challenges and lessons from TB programs that emphasize investments in research and rapid uptake of new diagnostic, prevention, and treatment tools for universal health coverage.

by Barbara K. Timmons, PhD

Tuberculosis (TB) is the pandemic that won’t go away. This ancient disease, the leading infectious cause of death in the world, kills more than a million people every year. One-third of the world’s population lives with latent TB infection. Despite being a preventable and curable disease, TB has been difficult to eradicate in part because of the stigma around the infection, preventing people from getting tested and continuing treatment. 

Ethiopia is among the 30 countries with the highest burden of TB in the world. One TB patient in Eastern Ethiopia, a woman from the small city of Dire Dawa, told researchers from Management Sciences for Health (MSH), “My husband’s family stigmatized me a lot. Since they knew that I am a TB patient, they didn’t sleep in our house. They sleep outdoors. They are not also willing to eat with me. . . . Before I was infected with TB, our social life with other people was great. The social life of Dire Dawa community is well known. But after they knew that I am a TB patient, only one of my neighbors sometimes comes to visit me.”