Introducing post-discharge malaria chemoprevention (PMC) for management of severe anemia in Malawian children: a qualitative study of community health workers’ perceptions and motivation

Abstract

Severe malarial anaemia is one of the leading causes of paediatric hospital admissions in Malawi. Post-discharge malaria chemoprevention (PMC) is the intermittent administration of full treatment courses of antimalarial to children recovering from severe anaemia and findings suggest that this intervention significantly reduces readmissions and deaths in these children. Community delivery of health interventions utilizing community health workers (CHWs) has been successful in some programmes and not very positive in others. In Malawi, there is an on-going cluster randomised trial that aims to find the optimum strategy for delivery of dihydroartemesinin-piperaquine (DHP) for PMC in children with severe anaemia. Our qualitative study aimed to explore the feasibility of utilizing CHWs also known as health surveillance assistants (HSAs) to remind caregivers to administer PMC medication in the existing Malawian health system.