European Commission supports TDR initiative to improve community access to health interventions
The European Commission is supporting TDR to conduct research to improve and expand the involvement of community health volunteers in primary health care.
A new grant of 3 million Euros has been signed for a 6 million Euro project that continues into 2013.
The TDR project is set up for poor communities in resource-constrained health systems in low and middle income countries. The goal is to expand access to care for people in these areas by providing evidence on how best to engage communities to scale up primary health care services in their areas within national health systems. The work includes the assessment of the most efficient ways to scale up primary health care services, identifying sustainable incentives for motivating and retaining community health workers; the development and testing of an integrated diagnostic and treatment package for malaria, pneumonia and diarrhoea; and a web-based repository/clearing house of tools, resources, best practices and policy advice for programme implementers and decision makers.
The work will involve research groups in Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, Burkina Faso and Uganda. Partnerships set up with local and national implementers (ministries of health, United Nations agencies, national and international NGOs and other groups implementing primary health care packages) are being established so that agreements are reached on the implementation of the community-directed interventions within each specific region.
The local research institutions will lead the studies and also be responsible for briefing the ministries of health and disseminating the study results.
For more information, contact: Johannes Sommerfeld | Franco Pagnoni