Health workers learn new ways to treat malaria

PROTOCOLS have changed over the years and frontline health workers should be upskilled, says the Health Department’s malaria programme manager Leo Makita.
More than 30 trainers from 16 community health worker (CHW) schools around the country attended a three-day malaria refresher course on the latest PNG malaria information and diagnosis and treatment methods at the University of PNG School of Medical and Health Science in Port Moresby recently.
“The main objective of this course is to actually teach our community health workers to diagnose and treat malaria using new methods,” Makita said.
He said training of trainers was an important step in ensuring early and accurate diagnosis for more than a million malaria cases in PNG each year.
Makita said a strong message that was conveyed during training was the importance of diagnosing malaria using rapid diagnostic tests with the use of a microscope rather than clinical diagnostic tests as it was much more effective and accurate.
“We are training two trainers from each of the CHW schools across the country so every student graduating from the school can then apply it when they get into health centres and hospitals they will be working in.”