Second, use community health workers to improve malaria preventive services because high percentages of Africans live in rural areas where accessing hospitals is challenging.
Rwanda is already improving malaria services through a network of 45,000 community health workers.
Data shows that 57% of malaria cases in Rwanda are treated by community health workers.
Services community health workers render include distribution of LLINs, use of rapid diagnostic tests for diagnoses of malaria, use of artemisinin-combination drugs for treatment of uncomplicated malaria, referral of complicated malaria cases to district hospitals and leading environmental sanitation in villages.
In 2019, I was at the University of Global health Equity at Butaro in Rwanda and saw firsthand the work of community health workers and the impact they make to reduce the incidence of malaria.
