The 'community' in community case management of childhood illnesses in Malawi.

Background: Malawi has achieved a remarkable feat in reducing its under-5 mortality in time to meet its MDG 4 target despite high levels of poverty, low female literacy rates, recurrent economic crises, a severe shortage of human resources for health, and poor health infrastructure. The country's community-based delivery platform (largely headed by Health Surveillance Assistants, or HSAs) has been well established since the 1960s, although their tasks and responsibilities have evolved from surveillance to health promotion and prevention, and more recently to include curative services. However, the role of and the form that community involvement takes in community-based service delivery in Malawi is unclear.

Assessment of Malawi's success in child mortality reduction through the lens of the Catalytic Initiative Integrated Health Systems Strengthening programme: Retrospective evaluation.

Background: Malawi is estimated to have achieved its Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4 target. This paper explores factors influencing progress in child survival in Malawi including coverage of interventions and the role of key national policies.

Methods: We performed a retrospective evaluation of the Catalytic Initiative (CI) programme of support (2007-2013).

Scaling up integrated community case management of childhood illness: update from Malawi.

The Government of Malawi (GoM) initiated activities to deliver treatment of common childhood illnesses (suspected pneumonia, fever/suspected malaria, and diarrhea) in the community in 2008. The service providers are Health Surveillance Assistants (HSAs), and they are posted nationwide to serve communities at a ratio of 1 to 1,000 population. The GoM targeted the establishment of 3,452 village health clinics (VHCs) in hard-to-reach areas by 2011.