PFD's work in health: Cambodia | Nigeria

For more than a decade, Partners for Development has been working in the field of public health, meeting the needs of local, underserved communities. PFD’s health programs have focused on child survival, nutrition, safe motherhood, malaria and dengue prevention and control, and the prevention of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections. The organization has also been working to combat diarrhea and other diseases through clean water and sanitation programs.

PFD has made health education and training essential components of its health programming, with the goal of leaving skills, knowledge, and awareness in the hands of local partners. In addition, Partners for Development seeks to bring innovative service provision and monitoring techniques to local providers in order to increase the capacity and effectiveness of health care and service delivery.

In Cambodia, public health programming has formed the mainstay of PFD activities since 1992 and has resulted in many notable achievements over the years. The health status of the population, however, particularly in rural areas, remains low. With an HIV/AIDS prevalence rate of 2.7%, Cambodia is the Asian country most affected by the AIDS crisis, while malaria is still ranked amongst the leading causes of mortality and morbidity.

Surveys have shown that most Cambodians have a low level of confidence in the formal health delivery system, preferring to use locally available and traditional services instead. Linking families with the public health infrastructure has, therefore, been a major focus of PFD’s work in the field. Partners for Development has been working closely with local drug sellers, traditional birth attendants, community leaders, and mothers in order to build their knowledge of health care, as well as their faith and interest in the provincial and local health infrastructure. At the same time, PFD has invested in improving the quality of services provided at the health system level, through clinical skills training, organizational reform, improved management, and better monitoring and evaluation.

Partners for Development carries out much of its health work in Cambodia through training and support to a large network of Village Health Volunteers (VHVs) and Community-Based Distributors (CBDs). These individuals are trained by PFD to help deliver educational messages to their communities on a wide variety of topics including sexually transmitted infections, reproductive health, birth spacing, nutrition, and hygiene behavior. They also play an important role in delivering or introducing key commodities, including modern contraceptives, iodized salt, and insecticide-treated bednets.

These peer networks play critically important roles in PFD’s implementation of the Hearth Model in villages, as well as in building community awareness and self-help in malaria prevention. Similarly, it is through VHV’s that Partners for Development spreads knowledge in rural communities about controlling outbreaks of dengue fever through the nurturing of the naturally occuring Mesocyclops, a predator of the Aedes aegypti mosquito (vector for dengue infection).

PFD also implements peer communication efforts through school-based child-to-child methodologies that use children to spread health and hygiene messages in their villages and schools. Partners for Development provides teacher training and capacity building for staff of the Provincial and District Education Offices, as well as curriculum development. Using songs and other child-friendly methods of delivering health information, the curriculum focuses on such topics as water and sanitation, infectious diseases, and the importance of nutrition. As a result, families and, indeed, entire villages, learn about the three food groups, the negative effects of smoking, and the importance of washing hands, using boiled water for drinking, and using bednets for malaria prevention.

For more on PFD’s work in Cambodia, click here.

In Nigeria, PFD has been working to increase access to family planning and prevention services for sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS in the impoverished states of Benue, Nassarawa, and Bauchi. Throughout the country the population growth rate is high, but use and access to modern contraceptive methods is low. Meanwhile, HIV/AIDS prevalence rates are as high as 7% in some parts of Nigeria. USAID predicts that as many as 10-15 million Nigerians could be HIV-infected over the next eight years.

PFD has responded to these serious health demands through programs making reproductive services available in communities, through providing support to households infected or affected by HIV/AIDS, and through improving local clinic facilities through physical enhancement or purchasing of equipment.

Working with local NGO partners and Village Development Committees on the selection process, PFD has helped to establish networks of Community-Based Distributors (CBDs) to distribute contraceptives and reproductive health information within their local communities.

Partners for Development has been building the capacity of local NGO partners to supervise the work of the CBDs while training CBDs directly in family planning, the prevention of sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS, the use of educational materials, and in counseling skills.

Meanwhile, a second and important tier of activity has been PFD’s efforts to strengthen the capacity of local clinics to provide more extensive services than those provided by the Community-Based Distributors. This includes counseling, the provision of injectable contraceptives and intra-uterine contraceptive devices, as well as syndromic management of sexually transmitted infections.

For more on PFD’s work in Nigeria, click here.