E-drug: Teaching mothers to provide home malaria treatment (cont)
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This strategy could save lives and help lower the incidence of
malaria which is currently a global problem. Although the research
could raise many questions in drug use, it introduces an intervention
which is simple in execution and which could be applicable in areas
where malaria is endemic such as ours. The intervention could
be extended to schools, households in remote urban areas and could
ultimately cover all age groups.
The only problem which could affect this approach of customer
education or indeed community intervention and improvement of access
to antimalarial essential drugs is variability in responsiveness
because of variability in attitude and skill of policy makers and
differing emphasis by regulatory authority of such programs either
within countries or indeed between them.
Christopher J. L. Murray and Julio Frenk alluded to issues that are
brought to play in health care when they recently considered a
framework for assessing the performance of health systems and how
countries with the same economic resources can perform differently in
delivery of health care.
It is also true that irrational drug use is still significant globally
amongst health providers and that if irrational drug use were to
increase in such a situation among health providers the situation
would be worse in mothers providing home treatment. Resistance to
antimalarial drugs would increase. However, these issues should not
prejudice the intervention.
Francis D. Juma MBChB., MD., Ph.D..,
Consultant Physician and Clinical Pharmacologist.,
Kenyatta National Hospital
Nairobi, Kenya
"Prof. Francis D. Juma" <fdjuma@africaonline.co.ke>
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