Malaria in Schools

Due to Malaria, children in rural Uganda miss many days of school with fever, nausea, headaches and some can be left with lasting brain damage or death. These children take many weeks to recover and their education suffers. We have almost eradicated Malaria in 4 primary schools in Uganda with a new approach to treatment and testing. We have trained teachers to use the WHO approved “rapid diagnosis and treatment kits”, to identify children with early symptoms, test them for malaria and treat those who tested positive. By using these simple kits the children are back at school the next day. We have coupled this with a malaria awareness program embraced by the whole community with a resultant drop in transmission.