How Health Guardians are improving healthcare in Madagascar
Education is critical when it comes to healthcare. The Health Guardian program in Madagascar was devised to train and employ community-selected villagers, usually women, to support healthcare services like vaccinations, malaria, and malnutrition treatments, as well as household basic health screenings.
This is especially important in Madagascar, where the population is growing rapidly and the healthcare system is strained. The Health Guardian program means that there is now a health resource located in every community Health In Harmony works with, improving accessibility, follow-up and overall health outcomes.
In 2020, when Health In Harmony began providing mobile clinics in Manombo area, a remote region of south-eastern Madagascar, child vaccination rates were low. Rates have now improved to more than 95% for vaccination coverage for children under 2 years old.
In 2023, the WASH program was introduced to the Manombo community. Previously projects to introduce latrines in Manombo were unsuccessful due to local customs. After community dialogue and discussions over diseases linked to open defecation, communities asked to build latrines. As of December 2023, 850 latrines have been built.
“For the year 2024, we have a new objective to achieve together with our partners and the Ministry of Health: it is to screen and treat cases of tuberculosis and bilharzia in the community of Manombo and among populations in the Atsimo Atsinanana region,” explains Health In Harmony’s Madagascar Medical Coordinator, Dr Andry Tsirimanana.
These focuses arose from Radical Listening sessions conducted with local communities. “The difference in our method is that we do nothing without the opinion of the people, we work together with the community to achieve a single objective and we all have the right to give our opinion from the project's design to its completion,” Dr Tsirimanana continues.
“To protect the Manombo rainforest, the community asked Health In Harmony to provide quality and accessible health care for all. When they are healthy and can work, community members can feed their families without the pressure to go into the forest to exploit it for income,” Dr Tsirimanana summarizes.
“Providing healthcare as part of conservation efforts is part of a Planetary Health approach whereby we believe there is an important correlation between human health and a healthy environment. Supporting HIH means supporting your future and supporting the planet.”