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Clicking here will bring you directly to all online malaria tools, presented by general malaria issues and by the FRESH core components: school health policies; water, sanitation and the environment; skills-based health education; and school health services.
Below you will find information on:What is malaria?Why focus efforts through schools?Using the FRESH framework to prevent and reduce malaria through schools. |
What is malaria?
Malaria is the most common and deadly parasitic disease in the world. It has been around for a very long while, but environmental disturbance, malnutrition and the failure of drugs once used to control it have conspired to make malaria as serious a problem now as it was during the first half of the twentieth century. Young children and pregnant women are particularly vulnerable.
read more
Why focus efforts through schools?
Children are especially vulnerable to malaria, and for those who survive to school age malaria can reduce both the opportunity and the ability to learn.
read more
Using the FRESH framework to prevent and reduce malaria through schools.
School health policies - Water, sanitation and the environment - Skills-based health education - School-based health services
>FRESH Core Component No1: School health policies
School policies should cover all the activities that will be undertaken at the school to reduce exposure of students and staff to malaria-carrying mosquitoes and to care for sick students or staff. Thus, policies may include provisions for: - efforts made to reduce mosquito-breeding spots on school grounds, in particular, ensuring that water and sanitation facilities do not provide breeding spots
- the content and delivery of skills-based health education to help students develop the knowledge, attitudes and skills needed to protect themselves and others from being bitten by malaria mosquitoes, and to provide care for someone who may be sick with malaria.
- protocols for providing health services or referrals to community health service providers to students or staff with symptoms of malaria illness
- outreach to parents and the community
This last is especially important. Efforts to eradicate mosquito-breeding spots on school grounds are not likely to have a significant impact on malaria infection rates if good breeding spots are widespread in other parts of the community. In addition, since children are not usually at school during the period when malaria mosquitoes are biting (dusk to dawn), the school’s ability to offer the physical protection children need when they need it is limited. Only by involving the whole community in malaria-prevention activities can the school hope to significantly reduce malaria infection rates among children. The development of school policies is an opportunity that administrators should seize upon to involve students and staff, parents and other members of the community in community-wide activities to reduce the spread of malaria.
>FRESH Core Component No2: Water, sanitation and the environment
Schools can be a model for malaria control efforts in the community at large.
A healthy, safe and secure learning environment should include protection from mosquitoes and provision of safe water supplies.
>FRESH Core Component No3: Skills-based health education
In the absence of a vaccine, widespread prevention and prompt treatment are the focus of efforts to fight malaria. Prevention, which involves efforts to eliminate the Anopheles mosquito and to prevent mosquito bites, is very dependent on local and individual initiatives. Treatment requires not only the availability of medicines, but also the ability of individuals to seek appropriate and timely care for themselves and for others. Information about where mosquitoes breed, how infection occurs and the symptoms and treatment of malaria must be widely disseminated. But information alone is not enough. Individuals must also be motivated and enabled to carry out a variety of activities to reduce the incidence and impact of malaria infection.
The goal of skills-based health education about malaria is to provide young people with the knowledge, attitudes and skills needed to create conditions and adopt behaviours that reduce their, and others’, risk of becoming sick or dying from malaria. At a minimum, students should learn how malaria spreads, how it is prevented and treated, and how to recognise and help a person with fever.
School malaria prevention programmes are a good example of how schools can make a contribution to community health. It is suggested that children can be important agents for change in malaria control programmes. Skills-based health education through schools can help promote a community wide understanding of malaria with particular emphasis on the need for community-based control measures such as the use of impregnated bed nets. Schools can serve as a focus for synchronised impregnation of bed nets and distribution.
>FRESH Core Component No4: School health services
School-based health and nutrition services could provide treatment or referral services and offer care for sick children.
Children with malaria can in most cases be quickly and effectively treated with a course of inexpensive oral tablets. But because fever may be the only sign of malaria, it may be difficult to distinguish it from other potentially life-threatening conditions.
Other types of intervention are less appropriate for the school child as demonstrated in a study from Kenya where the provision through schools of chemoprophylaxis, mass drug administration, selective treatment of infections and fever management with diagnostics were considered unaffordable options (Brooker et al, 2000). |
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What is malaria?
Malaria is the most common and deadly parasitic disease in the world. It has been around for a very long while, but environmental disturbance, malnutrition and the failure of drugs once used to control it have conspired to make malaria as serious a problem now as it was during the first half of the twentieth century. Young children and pregnant women are particularly vulnerable.
read more
Why focus efforts through schools?
Children are especially vulnerable to malaria, and for those who survive to school age malaria can reduce both the opportunity and the ability to learn.
read more
Using the FRESH framework to prevent and reduce malaria through schools.
School health policies - Water, sanitation and the environment - Skills-based health education - School-based health services
>FRESH Core Component No1: School health policies
School policies should cover all the activities that will be undertaken at the school to reduce exposure of students and staff to malaria-carrying mosquitoes and to care for sick students or staff. Thus, policies may include provisions for: - efforts made to reduce mosquito-breeding spots on school grounds, in particular, ensuring that water and sanitation facilities do not provide breeding spots
- the content and delivery of skills-based health education to help students develop the knowledge, attitudes and skills needed to protect themselves and others from being bitten by malaria mosquitoes, and to provide care for someone who may be sick with malaria.
- protocols for providing health services or referrals to community health service providers to students or staff with symptoms of malaria illness
- outreach to parents and the community
This last is especially important. Efforts to eradicate mosquito-breeding spots on school grounds are not likely to have a significant impact on malaria infection rates if good breeding spots are widespread in other parts of the community. In addition, since children are not usually at school during the period when malaria mosquitoes are biting (dusk to dawn), the school’s ability to offer the physical protection children need when they need it is limited. Only by involving the whole community in malaria-prevention activities can the school hope to significantly reduce malaria infection rates among children. The development of school policies is an opportunity that administrators should seize upon to involve students and staff, parents and other members of the community in community-wide activities to reduce the spread of malaria.
>FRESH Core Component No2: Water, sanitation and the environment
Schools can be a model for malaria control efforts in the community at large.
A healthy, safe and secure learning environment should include protection from mosquitoes and provision of safe water supplies.
>FRESH Core Component No3: Skills-based health education
In the absence of a vaccine, widespread prevention and prompt treatment are the focus of efforts to fight malaria. Prevention, which involves efforts to eliminate the Anopheles mosquito and to prevent mosquito bites, is very dependent on local and individual initiatives. Treatment requires not only the availability of medicines, but also the ability of individuals to seek appropriate and timely care for themselves and for others. Information about where mosquitoes breed, how infection occurs and the symptoms and treatment of malaria must be widely disseminated. But information alone is not enough. Individuals must also be motivated and enabled to carry out a variety of activities to reduce the incidence and impact of malaria infection.
The goal of skills-based health education about malaria is to provide young people with the knowledge, attitudes and skills needed to create conditions and adopt behaviours that reduce their, and others’, risk of becoming sick or dying from malaria. At a minimum, students should learn how malaria spreads, how it is prevented and treated, and how to recognise and help a person with fever.
School malaria prevention programmes are a good example of how schools can make a contribution to community health. It is suggested that children can be important agents for change in malaria control programmes. Skills-based health education through schools can help promote a community wide understanding of malaria with particular emphasis on the need for community-based control measures such as the use of impregnated bed nets. Schools can serve as a focus for synchronised impregnation of bed nets and distribution.
>FRESH Core Component No4: School health services
School-based health and nutrition services could provide treatment or referral services and offer care for sick children.
Children with malaria can in most cases be quickly and effectively treated with a course of inexpensive oral tablets. But because fever may be the only sign of malaria, it may be difficult to distinguish it from other potentially life-threatening conditions.
Other types of intervention are less appropriate for the school child as demonstrated in a study from Kenya where the provision through schools of chemoprophylaxis, mass drug administration, selective treatment of infections and fever management with diagnostics were considered unaffordable options (Brooker et al, 2000). |
Documents
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Facts for Life
This publication provides the essential facts that all families need and have a right to know to protect children's lives and health. - More |
Websites
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PATH Canada
PATH Canada is a non-profit, non-governmental organization whose goal is to improve health, especially the health of women and children, in developing regions of the world.
- More info >> Visit the website
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The Organization
Malaria Tools