Karonga Diocese Health Desk conducts review and mentorship meetings for TB community volunteers in Karonga and Chitipa District

Karonga Diocese Health Desk conducts review and mentorship meetings for TB community volunteers in Karonga and Chitipa District

By Vincent Shaba

The Health Desk conducted review and mentorship of volunteers in Chitipa and Karonga Districts under a community TB care project entitled Invest for impact against TB/HIV. Meetings took place from the 23^rd of March this year.

The purpose of these meetings was to monitor progress of activities including community education of TB, sputum sample collection and supporting of patients on TB treatment.

During the meetings, project staff took an opportunity to mentor volunteers. Project staff also monitor data collection tools such as the community presumptive TB register, monthly report form and others to ensure that they are correctly filled. Project staff from the Diocese work in partnership with Ministry of Health (MoH) health workers specifically The District Environmental Health Officer (DEHO) and the District TB Officer (DTO). At community level, TB Focal persons from health facilities and community HSAs support volunteers in their day to day operation.

The goal of this project is to reduce illness and deaths from TB through strengthening TB activities at Community level. Specifically, the project intends to increase the number of TB cases diagnosed and to increase number of patients treated for TB confirmed positive.

This project is funded by Global Fund through Actionaid (Malawi) and Episcopal conference of Malawi (ECM). During this first quarter review meetings, 10 sputum collection points in Chitipa and 8 in Karonga were visited. Generally it was noted that there is slow progress of activities since mid-last year. Contributing factors include low motivation of volunteer due to few volunteers participating in review meetings, wearing out of personal protective equipment and enablers. Long distance with poor transport means further impede volunteer movement to health facilities. This has resulted in low yield of presumptive cases as well as cases confirmed positive.  

Actionaid the principal recipient (PR) of the project promised to replenish supplies. Karonga Diocese staff is encouraging volunteers to workers tirelessly in spite of these hardships especially educating communities on TB.