Probitas Foundation has approved us an important grant to carry out an ambitious sanitary project that we will carry out with our local partner in Honduras, ACOES: “Reduced the incidence of neglected tropical diseases with greater impact in the marginal zone of New Capital (Tegucigalpa, Honduras) through of a model of community intervention “.
Narrative summary of the project:
ACOES with the support of the Probitas Foundation has managed to establish a comprehensive health platform in the human settlement called the “New Capital”, one of the most marginal areas of Tegucigalpa.
This platform is equipped
(i) with the necessary medical equipment in the network of clinics and clinics that ACOES has,
(ii) a team of professionals from various health fields involved in the project and
(iii) a team of Health Promoters trained to promote prevention activities throughout the community.
From this position, ACOES can undertake longer-term projects, with a greater level of depth and coordination focused on solving the most complex health problems, strengthening the platform’s capacity, the health of the community and the community commitment to raise health. of the area.
Among the health priorities in Honduras, the attention of ETD is especially relevant.
Honduras has been one of the first countries in Latin America with a national plan for the prevention, detection, control and elimination of ETD (“Strategic Plan for prevention, care, control and elimination of neglected infectious diseases 2012-2017”).
The reasons why Honduras has been a pioneer in the management of neglected infections are based on its special vulnerability to DTE:
(i) third country in America with the highest incidence of chikungunya and zika,
(ii) fifth with the highest incidence of dengue,
( iii) seventh with the highest incidence of tuberculosis,
(iv) high incidence of chagas, leishmaniasis, leptospirosis, tetanus, geohelmintasis, taeniasis and cistercosis with vectors in 12 of the 18 departments of Honduras.
Source: Pan American Health Organization 2016.
The lack of budget allocation, execution capacity and an adequate methodology in the most marginal areas has prevented the implementation of the Strategic Plan throughout the national territory and the materialization of all the strategies contemplated.
In this context, the New Capital, both because of its level of poverty and because of its isolation at the institutional level, is one of the most vulnerable areas at the level of NTDs in the country.
ACOES proposes to the Probitas Foundation an innovative project focused on prevention to reduce the incidence of NTDs through a model of multidisciplinary community intervention, developing theoretical models of the WHO and the Strategic Plan of the Ministry of Health of Honduras that serves as a reference to use in other parts of the country and the Central American area.
The project strategy will focus on 5 lines of work:
Community Health:
o Community prevention:
§ Field work by the medical team to develop a baseline of the NTDs prevalent in the New Capital
§ Train ACOES Health Promoters in prevention of ETD
§ Segment the New Capital in different sectors to develop home visits and prevention campaigns
§ Training of “street supervisors” by sectors that periodically monitor the community action plan for the prevention of ETD by certifying the homes that comply with the prevention standards (access to drinking water or methods of purification, hygiene, animal control, etc.). )
§ Monitoring of the prevention program o Intervention of especially vulnerable groups (elderly, pregnant, lactating, children) to avoid epidemic outbreaks: provision of health care that allows the early detection of suspected cases, where appropriate, the necessary health care and the monitoring of chronic pathologies·
Child’s Health:
o Use the ACOES schools as a platform to
(i) strengthen the health of students and reinforce the health education of students to avoid epidemic outbreaks and (ii) complement the community intervention program with awareness campaigns for children with projections to the families
o Provision of healthcare that allows the early detection of suspicious cases and, where appropriate, the health care necessary for chronic pathologies ·
Public health:
o Impact with the nearby Health Centers, the Ministry of Health and the School of Medicine of the Public University of Honduras in the execution of the National Strategic Plan in the New Capital through the intervention methodology developed by Probitas / ACOES ·
Veterinary Health:
o Involve specialists in Veterinary Health in the design, implementation of the model of community intervention in the care and hygiene of animals in the home ·
Inter-sectoral intervention: the project will benefit from the intervention of professionals from various health and social areas that ACOES has through the collaboration of several national and international faculties (see ANNEXES 5, 6 and 9, which contain documents that certify the intervention of universities in the project, as well as expressing their support for the ACOES project in general and the project proposed here) ensure a greater culture of health and prevention (dentistry, psychology, nutrition, social work, among others). The project will be carried out in the 3 health areas reinforced in 2017 by Probitas (plus an additional space) through the health team consisting of 2 certified doctors, 1 doctor in social service, two nurses in serious social, 4 to 6 students in 6 years of Medicine in 1.5-month rotations, 40 health promoters, 100 people in the community as supervisors by sectors and foreign aid workers from several universities in Spain.
