The African Institute for Health and Development (AIHD) and the END Fund partnered with the governments of Kenya and Rwanda alongside numerous technical experts to design, operationalize and evaluate a comprehensive microplanning approach specifically tailored to community-based mass drug administration for Soil Transmitted Helminthiasis and Schistosomiasis. In Kenya, the project was implemented in the five Sub Counties of Vihiga County: Emuhaya, Luanda, Vihiga, Hamisi and Sabatia. From the study, Vihiga county showed a high prevalent rate of Soil Transmitted Helminthiasis (round worms and hookworms). The parasites are found in contaminated water bodies and penetrate through the skin into the body causing infections.

In 2019, the END Fund’s Dew Innovation Fund (DIF) was launched to harness creative solutions to accelerate progress towards the interruption of parasite transmission in four countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe. One of its key objectives was to identify and leverage innovations from other sectors of health and development, which could improve the efficiency and effectiveness of deworming. High-quality microplanning is an innovation that can directly impact DIF’s overall goal, by improving the performance and reach of community-level mass drug administration.

Social mobilization is an essential tool for development. It is a process that engages and motivates a wide range of partners and allies at national and local levels to raise awareness of and demand for a particular development objective in this case, to increase the geographical coverage and uptake of deworming medicines in Kenya and Rwanda through dialogues.

It helps individuals, population segments and entire communities to understand the benefits and importance of participating in health interventions. By doing so, it generates demand for treatment in endemic areas and supports program goals of disease control and elimination. Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are a diverse group of communicable diseases that occur under tropical and sub-tropical climate conditions and are intimately linked to poverty (WHO, 2010). These include but are not limited to; schistosomiasis (SCH), soil transmitted helminthiasis (STH), lymphatic filariasis (LF), trachoma, dengue, leprosy, among others. More than 25 million of Kenyans are affected by NTDs with most at risk being poor communities. To address the burden of these diseases, the Government of Kenya (GoK) established the Breaking Transmission Strategy (BTS) 2019-2023 as part of its commitment to achieving the global control and elimination targets for 4 preventive chemotherapy (PC) NTDs endemic in the country.

AIHD recommended the need for long-term interventions targeting community members for example, conducting health talks at health facilities level and public education of communities. Also barriers of communication from the community needed to be addressed by developing targeted messages for different cohorts in the communities. “In our public health programs, we should take the health messages to the people. That is why we have Community Health Volunteers (CHVs) to create health awareness education to the community in terms of hygiene and nutrition.”( Dr. Wilbur Ottichilo, Governor, Vihiga County).

There was the need to engage families e.g. Muslim families in STH community-based interventions related to WASH. This is regarding hygiene after toilet use since some of them use only water (without soap) to clean. This behavior may put them at risk of STH and other diseases. There is therefore a felt need to develop a message encouraging people to wash their hands with clean water and soap after toilet use.

The project aimed to achieve the following outcomes:

• Improved coverage and reach of MDAs through better understanding of the size and distribution of the target population and its burden of disease.
• Improved allocation of resources for the MDA, through more efficient drug and human resource allocation and improved social mobilization; and
• Better assessment of program performance, through improved supervision and accountability and faster and more accurate reporting.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends five public-health strategies for the prevention and control of these diseases: preventive chemotherapy; intensified disease management; integrated vector management; management of neglected zoonotic diseases; and provision of safe water, sanitation, and hygiene (WHO, 2012).  Currently, there are global efforts to control and eliminate neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) through partnerships between communities, governments, United Nations (UN) agencies, development partners and pharmaceutical companies (MoH Strategic plan 2019-2023)