Mali Child Mortality Reduced Thanks to Community Empowerment

An innovative program piloted in a village outside of Bamako, Mali, has reduced one community’s child mortality rate by tenfold over a three year period. Researchers say that the remarkable results are due to community empowerment and interventions in health, education, and employment.

Dr. Ari Johnson, from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) evaluated the program in Yirimadjo, Mali. Administered by Senegalese NGO Tostan, Malian NGO Muso, and the Mali Ministry of Health, the program reduced the child mortality rate to 17 deaths per 1,000 children under the age of five in the period from 2008-2011.

During this time, 24 community health workers went door-to-door to more than 7,000 households, treating sick children and evaluating healthy ones for any warning signs of childhood illness. The success in this method, according to Johnson, lies in the assertive approach to treatment. As many childhood illnesses strike suddenly and worsen rapidly (sometimes resulting in death in under 48 hours), by the time families seek out treatment on their own it is often too late.

Additionally, the administering NGOs worked to reduce child mortality by addressing systemic causes of childhood illness and death: namely poverty. Health workers introduced education and employment opportunity initiatives to help empower community members to escape poverty and have more control over their own futures.

Molly Melching, Tostan’s Executive Director, noted that this kind of initiative where health, education, and development build on each other has proven to be highly effective.

“Tostan’s major goal has always been to educate, to get people at the grassroots the information they need to make important decisions and become really involved in development efforts themselves and actually own their own development,” she told Voice of America News.

The program’s UCSF evaluators noted that more research was needed, but that they had high hopes for the program overall.

Creative Commons Love: European Commission DG ECHO on Flickr.com

Written by Carla Drumhiller Smith