Community engagement and training videos complete
With our collaborators from Digital MEdIC at the Stanford Center for Health Education, we’ve prepared 2 videos in multiple languages that will be used to explain the project to community members and patients, and to train VHWs on how to collect dried blood spots. Here are the English versions:
SEACTN is extending to Cambodia!
We recently received the exciting news that the Global Fund will support the expansion of the SEACTN network to Cambodia. The funding will allow us to work in an additional ~130 villages in Battambang and Pailin provinces, where Village Malaria Workers are currently in place, but as elsewhere in the region they have seen sharp declines in malaria incidence, and testing rates have fallen.
Despite the challenging environment, SEACTN/RFI projects are gearing up for launch:
- Protocols for Work Package A, the verbal autopsies, and the Stakeholder Analysis approved by OxTREC
- Local health authorities in all countries have been informed of the programme and have confirmed their support
- 486 villages and 28 health centres in Laos selected for inclusion in WP-A
- eCRF developed on Commcare and undergoing testing
- Laboratory equipment purchased including a BD-MAX multiplex PCR platform, a MagNa Pure NA purification instrument; -80c freezer, a biosafety cabinet.
- Multiplex molecular panels developed
- Community engagement and patient information videos scripted (6 languages) and currently in production.