Center for Health Market Innovations (CHMI)

Programs

Nyando Integrated Child Health and Education Project

last updated Oct 25, 2011

Overview

Implementing organization: 
CDC
Implementation Partner(s): 
Population Services International
Legal Status: 
Private (not-for-profit)
Year Launched: 
2007
Stage: 
Existing/expansion stage
Income Level of Target Population: 
Bottom 20%

Funding

Primary Source of Funding: 
Donor
Funders: 
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Summary: 

CDC has joined with partners to create the Nyando Integrated Child Health and Education (NICHE) project to combine several proven approaches to child survival in an impoverished rural district of western Kenya.

Program goals/rationale: 

The families in the NICHE project face problems associated with poverty that are common in the developing world. The majority of respondents in the 60 villages are poor, and they have limited access to basic sanitary facilities. Young children have high rates of acute respiratory infection, diarrhea, and malaria, compared with populations in more developed countries. High rates of chronic malnutrition are of particular concern, because malnutrition contributes to approximately half the deaths in children aged <5 years.

Free distribution of ITNs has resulted in high observed baseline use rates, and ongoing promotion of water-treatment products has resulted in reported use of Safe Water Services, SWS products at baseline by 43.0% of households and confirmed use by 10.7% of households.

Recognition of the need for multiple interventions to address child survival has led to recent initiatives to bundle interventions. Greater use of interventions available today might make possible the achievement of the United Nations millennium development goal to reduce child mortality by two thirds by the year 2015. By integrating services, combining interventions, and engaging local leadership, the NICHE project is attempting to create a model for improved child health.

Key program components: 

Interventions include:

  • Safe Water Services SWS

  • Distribution of ITNs

  • Promotion of handwashing with soap

  • Distribution of Sprinkles®, single-serve packets of dry powder, containing iron and other micronutrients intended for home fortification of foods consumed by young children who are no longer exclusively breastfeeding

  • Deworming of primary-school children with albendazole;

To promote these interventions, the project partners with Population Services International, which has an ongoing program to promote purchase and use of SWS bleach solution, ITNs, and reproductive-health products through mass media, peer educators, murals, and billboards. The Safe Water and AIDS Project (SWAP) trains HIV self-help groups in rural villages and urban low-income settings to provide health education and sell health products to their neighbors as an income-generating activity. SWAP trains clinic nurses, school teachers, and religious leaders to teach their clients, students, and congregations about these interventions and installs drinking water and hand washing stations in these settings. Finally, NICHE project staff members enlist the support of local political leaders and the ministries of health and education.

The NICHE project will enable CDC and partners to assess the extent to which combining proven child-survival interventions and employing multiple community-based implementation techniques can improve health in impoverished populations. The use of inexpensive, locally available interventions will control program costs and increase the prospects for sustaining the program. If the simultaneous engagement of local populations and institutions, the private sector, and government in program implementation proves successful, this implementation approach might serve as a blueprint for child-survival programs in other regions of Kenya and elsewhere in Africa.

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