The Kapirera family used to be regular visitors at the Mombe Health Center. The mother would bring her children in so often with malaria that when they stopped coming, the clinic went to check on them to see if they were OK. They’re fine – they just don’t get malaria any more.

In Zambia, cases of deaths from malaria have fallen by two-thirds. These results are due to the work of clinical staff like Ignicious Bulongo, who runs the Mombe Health Center.

Last September Bulongo and his colleagues organized the distribution of bed nets to 6,000 houses in the community, as well as spraying them with mosquito repellent known as RDT. The results have been staggering; hardly anyone shows up at the clinic with malaria.

“After the intervention they have stopped coming to the health center and we’ve made a follow-up. We’ve gone to visit them. They are healthy. We are just monitoring if they need to be given more mosquito nets in future,” says Bulongo.

Fewer patients means more time to educate the community on the importance of using the bed nets – and countering any misapprehensions. “When we were spraying, cockroaches would come out, so some people perceived there were more cockroaches with RDT spraying,” says Bulongo. He and his colleagues explained that another kind of bug control is needed to kill cockroaches. As well as having more time to advise on malaria prevention, clinic staff are now more able to focus their resources on other forms of illness.