24 April 2009
When pregnant women in Kenya's malaria hot-spots visit their local clinics, as well as the usual help and advice they get something extra: a special net, treated with insecticide, that when hung around a bed acts as a barrier against malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
The free nets, which are also issued to all children under one year of age in high-risk areas, have been made available by the US-based non-profit organisation Population Services International (PSI), which has received support from DFID. To bolster its fight against malaria in Kenya, PSI also sells the treated bed nets in rural shops at an affordable price, provides net manufacturers with the tools to make their nets as long-lasting as possible, and trains nurses to distribute nets to their patients.
Multi-media campaigns have also been carried out. Advertisements for two brands of bed net (Malaria Ishindwe and Supanet) encourage Kenyans to sleep under a net every night, while radio broadcasts remind pregnant women to get vaccinated and pick up their free nets.
This range of activities is part of a national effort, driven by the government, to reduce the huge number of people, particularly children, killed every year by malaria. The disease is Kenya's biggest childhood killer, claiming the lives of an estimated 36,000 under-fives annually. To address this child mortality crisis, in 2002 Kenya's government developed the National Malaria Strategy, a set of concrete actions targeted at slashing malaria mortality and morbidity by 30% by 2010.
Since then, PSI has helped to establish a growing culture of bed net use in the country. In 2003, for example, just over 5% of Kenyan households owned a treated anti-malaria net. But by 2007 close to half of all households had one of these nets in their possession. Similarly, use of treated bed nets among pregnant women leapt from under 5% to almost 40% over the same time period - an increase that was matched by a rise in use amongst children under five.
By 2008, around 80% of households in malaria-prone areas owned some kind of bed net. For huge numbers of Kenyans today, these simple objects have become an inexpensive, but lifesaving, part of the furniture.
Facts and stats
- The PSI/Kenya malaria programme has been carried out under the leadership of Kenya's Ministry of Health and Division of Malaria Control.
- From 2002-2008, DFID provided over $50 million of support to the PSI/Kenya programme.
- PSI's work in Kenya also included conducting quantitative and qualitative research to monitor the malaria programme's progress and understand barriers to insecticide-treated net (ITN) use.
- The use of ITNs in four sentinel research districts was recently shown to be associated with a 44% reduction in childhood mortality.
- PSI is a social marketing organization, based in Washington, D.C., that works with the private sector to address health problems in developing countries.