By Jack Lapauve Jr, EMTV – Port Moresby
Over 30 trainers from 16 Community Health Worker Schools recently attended a refresher course for malaria diagnosis.
The three-day course was held in Port Moresby and facilitated by malaria experts from the National Health Department, PNG Institute of Medical Research, Central Public Health Laboratory, and the World Health Organisation.
Topics covered included the latest PNG malaria information, and current diagnosis and treatment methods.
The training of trainers is an important step in ensuring early and accurate diagnosis for more than one million malaria cases in PNG each year.
NDoH’s Malaria Program Manager, Leo Makita, said the training of trainers is an important step in ensuring early and accurate diagnosis for the more than one million malaria cases in PNG each year.
“The main objective of this refresher is to actually teach our community health workers to diagnose and treat malaria using newer methods. Protocols have changed over the years and our frontline health workers must be upskilled,” Mr. Makita said.
“We are training two trainers from each of the community health worker schools across the country. We see this as better than training community health workers who are already working in their field.”
The training is supported by the Australia-China-PNG Trilateral Malaria Project.
