Thursday, 27th of October 2011 |
‘CHW programmes could potentially achieve large gains in child survival in sub-Saharan Africa if these programmes were implemented at scale. Large-scale rigorous studies, including RCTs, are urgently needed to provide policymakers with more evidence on the effects of CHWs delivering these interventions.’
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Thirty years after Alma-Ata: a systematic review of the impact of community health workers delivering curative interventions against malaria, pneumonia and diarrhoea on child mortality and morbidity in sub-Saharan Africa
Human Resources for Health 2011, 9:27 doi:10.1186/1478-4491-9-27
Jason B Christopher (drjchristopher@gmail.com)
Alex Le May (alex.lemay@gmail.com)
Simon Lewin (Simon.Lewin@nokc.no)
David A Ross (david.ross@lshtm.ac.uk)
Publication date 24 October 2011
Article URL http://www.human-resources-health.com/content/9/1/27
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1
Thirty years after Alma-Ata: a systematic review of the
impact of community health workers delivering curative
interventions against malaria, pneumonia and diarrhoea
on child mortality and morbidity in sub-Saharan Africa
Author List
Jason B Christopher1 drjchristopher@gmail.com (Corresponding Author)
Alex Le May1 alex.lemay@gmail.com
Simon Lewin2 simon.lewin@kunnskapssenteret.no
David A Ross3 david.ross@lshtm.ac.uk
1PHDC Masters Programme, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK
2Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services, Norway and Medical Research
Council of South Africa, South Africa.
3Dept. of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene & Tropical
Medicine, UK
Abstract
Background
Over thirty years have passed since the Alma-Ata Declaration on primary health care in
1978. Many governments in the first decade following the declaration responded by
developing national programmes of community health workers (CHWs), but evaluations of
these often demonstrated poor outcomes. As many CHW programmes have responded to the
HIV/AIDS pandemic, international interest in them has returned and their role in the
response to other diseases should be examined carefully so that lessons can be applied to
their new roles. Over half of the deaths in African children under five years of age are due to
malaria, diarrhoea and pneumonia – a situation which could be addressed through the use of
cheap and effective interventions delivered by CHWs. However, to date there is very little
evidence from randomised controlled trials of the impacts of CHW programmes on child
mortality in Africa. Evidence from non-randomised controlled studies has not previously
been reviewed systematically.
Methods
We searched databases of published and unpublished studies for RCTs and non-randomised
studies evaluating CHW programmes delivering curative treatments, with or without
preventive components, for malaria, diarrhoea or pneumonia, in children in sub-Saharan
Africa from 1987 to 2007. The impact of these programmes on morbidity or mortality in
children under six years of age was reviewed. A descriptive analysis of interventional and
contextual factors associated with these impacts was attempted.
Results
The review identified seven studies evaluating CHWs, delivering a range of interventions.
Limited descriptive data on programmes, contexts or process outcomes for these CHW
programmes were available. CHWs in national programmes achieved large mortality
reductions of 63% and 36% respectively, when insecticide-treated nets and anti-malarial
chemoprophylaxis were delivered, in addition to curative interventions.
Conclusions
CHW programmes could potentially achieve large gains in child survival in sub-
Saharan Africa if these programmes were implemented at scale. Large-scale rigorous
studies, including RCTs, are urgently needed to provide policymakers with more evidence
on the effects of CHWs delivering these interventions.
Background
In 1978, the Declaration of Alma-Ata presented Primary Health Care (PHC) as the means of
achieving Health for All and community or lay health workers (CHWs) became a
distinguishing feature of PHC implementation as it was rolled out. Several reviews of
national CHW programmes in the late 1980s and early 1990s came to similar conclusions:
quality of care from large-scale programmes was poor, generally because of a lack of
ongoing training and supervision and poor logistical and financial support [1,2,3]. It has
been argued that where national CHW programmes have failed, this has not been due to a
failure of the concept of CHWs or PHC but because the support and supervision necessary
to make them effective were too often missing. With the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and
increasing acknowledgement of the critical shortage of human resources within health
services to respond to it and to other diseases, the potential roles of CHWs within PHC have
received renewed attention [4]. Recent developments confirm the growing recognition of the
importance of PHC. It was the main subject of the 2008 WHO World Health Report, has the
endorsement of WHO Director-General Margaret Chan [5], and was the topic of a themed
issue of the Lancet [6].
Sub-Saharan Africa has only 3% of the global health workforce [7] but accounts for almost
half of the 7.7 million child deaths globally [8,9]. 55% of these deaths in African children
under 5 years of age are caused by malaria, pneumonia and diarrhoea [10]. Inexpensive
interventions such as antibiotics, oral rehydration solution, insecticide-treated nets (ITNs)
and antimalarials have been proven effective against these diseases, and it has been
estimated that 65-91% of childhood deaths from these three diseases could be prevented if
such interventions were delivered at scale in low-income countries [11]. Given the very
limited professional health care human resources in these settings, it is important to examine
the evidence for the effectiveness of CHW programmes as a delivery strategy for such
interventions in sub-Saharan Africa. Whilst CHWs may deliver both preventive and curative
interventions, this review focuses on the impact CHWs have when delivering curative
interventions. The training and roles of CHWs who do not have any responsibility for the
treatment of sick children are likely to be quite different from CHWs delivering curative
interventions, and for this reason the review did not include the former.
Five recent reviews have examined CHW programmes. Lewin et al. [4] and Haines et al.
[12], for example, conducted systematic and non-systematic reviews, respectively, that were
broad in scope and were restricted to RCTs. The reviews identified only three assessments
of CHWs’ effectiveness from sub-Saharan Africa. A non-systematic review by Lehmann
and Sanders [13] reported a broad range of evidence on CHWs. Beyond the three studies
identified by Lewin et al. [4] they identified no further data on the impact of CHW
programmes on morbidity/mortality in sub-Saharan Africa. Winch and colleagues [14]
described the main models of CHW programmes addressing malaria and pneumonia in
terms of drug delivery but did not assess their effectiveness. Finally, a recently published
systematic review calculated a mortality impact estimate for interventions delivered by
CHWs to preschool children [15]. However, only interventions against pneumonia were
included in this research, and only one of the seven contributing studies was from Africa.
These reviews indicate that randomised controlled trial (RCT) evidence on the effectiveness
of CHW programmes in sub-Saharan Africa is extremely scarce. While reviews have
stressed the need for further health impact research, they have not considered the available
evidence from non-randomised studies. This review attempts to rectify this by
systematically reviewing randomised and non-randomised studies of CHWs’ impact on
child mortality in sub-Saharan Africa. The weaknesses of non-randomised studies have been
described [16]. However, exclusion of all such studies without further consideration
effectively places a zero weighting on evidence from non-randomised studies, which is
clearly inappropriate. As long as the weaknesses of non-randomised studies are elucidated
and taken into account, it is appropriate to evaluate the evidence from them, especially
where RCTs are absent or few, in order to provide useful advice to policymakers on the
impact of interventions[17,18].
This paper reports how we conducted the systematic review, an analysis of the studies
identified by the review with descriptions of the CHW programmes they evaluated, and the
observations and conclusions we have made.
Methods
Search strategy
Systematic reviews are summaries of research evidence that address a clearly formulated
question using systematic and explicit methods to identify, select, and critically appraise
relevant research, and to collect and analyse data from the studies that are included in the
review [19]. For this systematic review, we searched the Medline (OVID), Embase (OVID)
and CAB Direct databases, the last of which includes unpublished literature. CHW search
terms from Lewin and colleagues’ Cochrane review [4] were used, with permission. The
search was limited to studies with a sub-Saharan African medical subject heading (MeSH)
term, involving interventions directed, at least in part, at children less than six years of age,
and that were delivered by CHWs who provided treatment (with or without preventive
services) for malaria, diarrhoea or pneumonia. Searches were not limited by language. The
disease-specific search filters were drawn from those used in the Medline (OVID) searches
for the Cochrane systematic reviews of pneumonia [20], diarrhoea [21] and malaria [22].
The corresponding Embase MeSH terms and CAB Direct keyword searches were substituted
for those used in the Medline(OVID) search. All the same limits and free-text searches were
used (see Additional File 1).
All three database searches were developed iteratively. The titles and abstracts of the first 20
identified studies per database were analysed for additional relevant terms. Those not
already within the respective database search were added to increase the search sensitivity.
Titles and abstracts were studied for relevance. Full-text articles were located for those
studies determined as potentially meeting the inclusion criteria. Two researchers with an
interest in CHW programmes and child mortality were contacted to see if they knew of any
additional unpublished or published data. We also examined the bibliographies of all
full-text papers for further potential studies. Emails were sent to the authors of all included
studies requesting details of any additional studies and to ask for further information on the
characteristics of the CHW programme they had evaluated. Three landmark books on CHWs
published between 1987 and 2007 were also examined for eligible studies [1,2,3].
Definitions and inclusion criteria
Study Design
Randomised controlled trials (RCTs), controlled before and after (CBA), uncontrolled
before and after, interrupted time series, and cohort and case control studies were included.
Cross-sectional studies were excluded. We assessed risk of bias for included studies but did
not exclude studies on this basis.
Study participants
A range of cadres with varied training and performing different roles have come under the
umbrella term of CHW and it is thus difficult to provide a precise definition. For this review,
we defined CHWs as individuals trained in the particular role of delivering curative care
(with or without preventive health interventions) for malaria, pneumonia or diarrhoea to
children aged less than six years. The intention was to evaluate CHWs who improve access
to this curative care by working in community settings. However, in their liaison with other
8
health workers, CHWs may spend some time in health centres. We did not want to exclude
such CHWs from the review and therefore an additional criterion for inclusion was that
CHWs worked, at least in part, outside medical facilities. Excluded from our definition were
health workers who had received formal health training, apart from CHW training, and those
who were formally accredited to a health worker cadre, such as nurses, paramedics or
clinical officers. Teachers providing school-based activities would only have been included
if they provided curative care to children aged less than six years. Mothers who had been
trained to give anti-malarials from a pack to their own child were also excluded because they
were not responsible for providing treatment outside their own families. Included studies
were those that had evaluated the impact of interventions directed at children less than six
years of age or where the impact in this age group (or part of this age group) was reported
separately.
Interventions
We included CHWs delivering curative care, with or without preventive services, to children
for at least one of malaria, pneumonia and diarrhoea. Programmes delivering purely
preventive interventions (e.g. bed-net distribution and community-based hygiene education
programmes) were excluded.
Effectiveness outcomes
Studies were included if they provided data on the impact of the CHW programme on
mortality, morbidity or nutritional status in children under six years of age.
Region and time
We included studies conducted in sub-Saharan Africa between 1987 and 2007. This 20-year
time-span was chosen because it covers the period following the three major earlier
assessments of African CHW programmes [1,2,3]. We considered it unlikely that there were
many eligible studies preceding this date and were concerned about changes in treatment
delivery since the early 1980s.
Two reviewers (JC, AL) independently assessed all the titles and abstracts arising from the
literature search for inclusion. A third reviewer (SL) was available as an independent arbiter
when needed.
Data extraction
Data extraction, and an assessment of risk of bias, was conducted independently by two
reviewers using a common, pre-defined reporting matrix to summarise findings (see
Additional file 2). Earlier evaluations of CHW programmes [1,2,3] identified important
contextual and interventional determinants of effective CHW programmes (see 'Data
Extraction: Characteristics which determine the effectiveness of CHW Programmes
' section). Where possible this information was also extracted from study papers, references
nd information obtained from the original authors.
Assessment of risk of bias
Randomised Controlled Trials: RCTs were assessed with regard to attrition, performance
and detection biases, concealment of allocation, use of intention-to-treat analyses and risk of
contamination. Non-Randomised Studies: Data on potential confounders (see 'Data extracted
on potential confounder' section) were extracted from articles, references and author10
provided information in order to determine whether intervention and control groups were
differentially affected. Risk of selection bias was assessed using the TREND checklist for
the reporting of non-randomised studies [23].
Data Extraction: Characteristics which determine the effectiveness of CHW
Programmes
CONTEXTUAL FACTORS
Setting
Country, Rural/Urban
Healthcare setting: Home/Other
Context
Burden of malaria/diarrhoea/acute respiratory infection
Population characteristics (demography, sex, socio-economic status, cultural & religious
background)
Functioning of basic health services
Decentralisation of health service control
Employment alternatives for CHWs
INTERVENTION FACTORS
CHW Programme Overview
Start date
Who set up & managed the programme(e.g. National Programme v NGO)
Number of CHWs in the programme
Number of total programme beneficiaries
Attrition rate of CHWs (i.e. how many of them stop being CHWs over time)
Paid or not, and if so by whom and how (e.g. cash or in kind)
CHW Roles
Curative & preventive health activities
Weekly pattern of activity
CHW Selection
By whom they were selected and the criteria used
CHW Characteristics
Education, sex, age, marital status, ethnicity, religion.
CHW Training
Duration, methods of training (e.g. didactic/practical), site (e.g. is it near their setting of
work?), choice of trainers
Content of training (e.g. curative v preventive, record-keeping, training/education skills)
Refresher courses (how often, how long and by whom)
CHW Supervision
Who supervises? (eg villagers, PHC worker, government)
How do they supervise?
Existence of incentives for work of quality.
Data extracted on potential confounders
_ Alternative public/private health care provision
_ NGO/mission healthcare provision
_ Economic factors (e.g. improved economic status permitting better transport)
_ Geographical factors (e.g. roads improving access to healthcare)
_ Environmental factors (e.g. rains, famine)
Analysis
Statistical pooling of outcome data was not attempted as the heterogeneity of the studies
with regard to contextual and interventional factors would have rendered such a metaanalysis
potentially misleading. Instead a narrative description of the results was conducted.
Results
The searches identified 499 unique titles and abstracts (see Figure 1). Screening of titles and
abstracts revealed 25 titles that potentially met the inclusion criteria and full-text articles of
these were obtained. Seven studies, published between 1991 and 2005, met the review’s
inclusion criteria.
Description of included studies
The key characteristics of the studies are summarised in Table 1. For reporting here, each
CHW programme has been given a short name, as outlined in Table 1.
Study settings
All seven CHW programmes were conducted in West Africa. Four studies evaluated CHWs
in the Gambia [24,25,26,27]. Three of these studies [24,25,26] tested CHW programmes in
the population of Farafenni, North Division. Menon and colleagues [24] and Greenwood and
colleagues [26] studied CHWs delivering identical services in the same population and
differing only with regard to when impact was assessed. Two studies assessed CHW
programmes in Ghana [28,29] and one evaluated CHWs in Benin [30]. All studies were
located in rural settings with high mortality and morbidity from diarrhoea, pneumonia and
malaria.
Study designs and outcomes
One study conducted in Ghana was an RCT [28] and four others were CBA studies, all
based in the Gambia [24,25,26,27]. Also included were one uncontrolled before and after
comparison [29] and one case-control study [30]. All studies measured impacts on infant
and child mortality through the use of demographic surveillance systems. Malarial morbidity
was also assessed in the Gambian studies.
Characteristics of CHW programmes
The Gambian PHC programme and the Pahou programme in Benin were nationwide CHW
interventions from which a selected group of CHWs were studied [27,30]. The Navrongo
and Gomoa studies in Ghana were of small-scale CHW programmes initiated by research
institutes at the time of the study [28,29]. The number of CHWs included in the studies
ranged from 8 to 17. In the Gambian PHC and Navrongo projects, the CHWs were older
men selected by village health committees [27,28]. The sex and selection of CHWs in the
Gomoa and Pahou (Benin) projects were not reported.
Apart from the Gomoa project which did not report this information [29], all CHW
programmes delivered health education on childhood nutrition, hygiene and immunisations,
oral rehydration solution and dispensed chloroquine as anti-malarial chemotherapy as well
as other unspecified medicines. Some CHW programmes provided paracetamol,
mebendazole and multivitamins as well as growth monitoring. Pahou CHWs made referrals
of patients to community health centres [30] but no mention was made of such a role in the
other programmes. Gambian PHC was the only programme in which CHWs provided
antibiotics (Penicillin V injections). Of the Gambian PHC programmes, Menon and
colleagues [24] and Greenwood and colleagues [26] studied CHWs delivering maloprim for
malarial chemoprophylaxis whilst Alonso and colleagues [27] studied CHWs delivering
insecticide-treated nets (ITNs).
Navrongo CHWs were trained for 6 weeks [28] and Gambian PHC CHWs for 8 weeks [27].
The duration of training was not reported for the Pahou and Gomoa programmes. Little
information was provided about the nature of this training or on the availability of further
education after the initial course. CHW payment was noted to be informal and left to the
discretion of the villagers in the Gambian PHC programme, and unreported for the other
programmes, except for Navrongo where CHW work was clearly stated to be unpaid [28].
CHWs were supervised by a range of professionals, including community health nurses in
Pahou and Gambian PHC [27,30], physicians and nurses in Gomoa [29] and by a village
health committee in the Navrongo programme [28]. The services available to the
comparison groups in the studies were poorly described. The Gambian national PHC
programme only placed CHWs in villages with over 400 residents, and smaller villages were
used as controls. Mobile teams delivering the Expanded Programme on Immunisation
visited both the larger and smaller villages. The control group in the Navrongo study [28]
received rural healthcare according to Ministry of Health guidelines. The other studies gave
no descriptions of services for comparison groups.
Risk of bias
The Navrongo study [28], using a cluster RCT design, randomised each of 4 clusters to
receive a different health care delivery strategy, one of which was a control. Comparability
of the clusters was compromised by differing baseline child mortality rates, and the fact that
there was only one cluster in each study arm will have negated many of the potential
advantages of randomisation [31]. The intervention was scaled up incrementally within each
cluster. A comparison was made of the mortality rates between geographical areas where the
intervention had and had not been scaled up. However, the process by which geographical
areas within a cluster were chosen for initial scale up was not described and therefore the
comparison of these areas may have been affected by selection bias.
Hill and colleagues [25], in reporting the findings of their CBA study in the Gambia, noted
that better roads were built near the villages in the intervention group (PHC villages). This
co-intervention, which took place during the study period, may have confounded the study
findings since improved access to facility care for PHC villages relative to non-PHC
(control) villages may have been responsible for the reduction in mortality observed
following the intervention. No mortality reduction was evident before the roads were built
[25].
The large impact on child mortality observed in the Gambian study by Menon and
colleagues [24], which used a CBA design, was partly confounded by secular changes.
Adjustment to determine if any residual impact might have been significant was not
performed. For Greenwood and colleagues’ CBA study in the Gambia [26], the confounders
were a worse malaria season in the post-intervention measurement period and increased
treatment from dispensaries in the control group. Since both of these worked to reduce the
observed impact, the true reduction in mortality is likely to have been greater than the 36%
reported (Table 1).
Alonso and colleagues’ Gambian CBA study [27] evaluated CHWs whose main role during
the study was ITN delivery. They considered the potential effects of a number of possible
confounders. Confounding by differential access to anti-malarial chemotherapy between the
intervention and control groups was excluded convincingly by the use of urinary
chloroquine assessments. The authors also note the possibility that differences in village
sizes and other factors may also have acted as confounders. However, they argue that the
large 1-4 year old mortality reductions seen in the intervention sites, and the clear attribution
of these reductions specifically to lower malaria mortality, makes the introduction of ITNs
delivered by CHWs the most plausible explanation.
In their case control study in Benin, Velema and colleagues [30] assessed known potential
confounders and selection biases (socioeconomic status, age, sex and the village from which
the children came) and demonstrated that the measured impact was unlikely to have been
due to them. However since this was a case-control study, unknown confounders and
selection biases may have been responsible for the reduced likelihood of death in those
receiving the CHW intervention. The before and after study by Afari and colleagues in
Ghana [29] did not include a control group and made no attempt to identify and measure
other potential explanations for the effects seen.
Impacts
Four studies assessed mortality impact over 12 months. In addition, the Gomoa study in
Ghana [29] measured mortality over 3 years, Hill and colleagues’ study in the Gambia [25]
measured mortality in 2-3 year time periods for a total of 14 years, and the Pahou study in
Benin [30] used deaths over a 2 year period as cases in a case-control trial. The studies
demonstrated varying impacts of CHW programmes on child mortality, ranging from a 63%
reduction [27] to a 87% increase [28], with six out of seven studies showing a reduction
overall, compared either with contemporaneous controls or in ‘after’ versus ‘before’
comparisons (Table 1).
It was a national programme of CHWs and traditional birth attendants (TBAs) delivering
basic treatments, ITNs and health education in the Gambia which achieved a 63% reduction
in mortality among 1-4 year olds [27]. When the same CHW programme delivered anti17
malarial chemoprophylaxis (instead of ITNs), 1-4 year old mortality was reduced by 36%
and the prevalence of children with fever and parasitaemia was reduced by 84% [26]. The
impacts reported in the other five studies were less certain because of the biases described
above. It was Pence and colleagues [28], who reported that a research-instituted CHW
programme in Navrongo, Ghana was associated with a marked increase in 1-4 year old
mortality within 4-5 years of its inception.
Apart from malarial morbidity, only one study (Gomoa) reported other measures of
morbidity, measuring nutritional status in the before and after groups. The study found no
statistically significant changes in height-for-age, or weight-for-height in children following
the intervention.
Contamination as a result of children from control groups receiving care from nearby
villages with CHWs was mentioned only in one study [25]. However, this may have
occurred in all studies, apart from the Pahou study in Benin [30], thereby reducing the
observed impact relative to true impact. The confidence intervals around the reported effect
sizes for the studies were likely to be substantial underestimates since clustering was not
adjusted for in any of the studies, even in those where there was only one cluster per study
arm.
Discussion
A recent overview of systematic reviews suggested that there is very little evidence on the
effectiveness of different policy options for human resources, including the use of CHWs, in
low-income countries [32]. Similarly, our review identified few studies published in the last
20 years on the impacts on child mortality and morbidity by sub-Saharan CHW programmes
designed to deliver curative interventions against malaria, diarrhoea or pneumonia.
However, several of the studies that were included had not been identified by the two global
CHW reviews that included non-randomised designs [13,15]. This review therefore
contributes towards developing the evidence base on the effects of CHW programmes. It
does however also reveal that there may not be a large pool of non-randomised studies to
draw upon when investigating the impact of CHW programmes on child health in Africa.
Many reports of such programmes that were identified in our literature search did not
include any evaluation of effectiveness against either mortality or morbidity.
It is unclear whether the finding that there is only a small pool of non-randomised studies
conducted in Africa is generalizable to other regions. A recent Cochrane review of
randomized controlled trials of CHW programmes identified nine trials from Asia and four
from Africa, but did not consider non-randomized studies [4]. Further work is needed to
explore the amount and quality of evidence from other high mortality regions.
The Gambian studies provide evidence that in a rural African setting affected by seasonal
malaria, a national CHW programme delivering either ITNs or malarial chemoprophylaxis
can have a marked impact on child mortality. This finding has important implications for
child health care in settings in which professional providers are in short supply. The CHWs
involved in the Gambian studies were selected by the villagers, were supervised by
community nurses and paid minimally, if at all. Such a result is surprising given that it is
smaller programmes with NGO or research institute involvement which have been typically
associated with better outcomes [33]. These programmes are generally able to place greater
emphasis on training, supervision, support and payment in cash or kind.
It is unclear whether the impacts reported, which were generally measured within two years
of the initiation of the CHW intervention, would be sustained over longer periods. National
programmes are often associated with high rates of CHW attrition [34,35] and initial
enthusiasm may be undermined by the preference consumers often have for curative over
preventive interventions. The Gambian study by Hill and colleagues [25], which had a
considerably longer follow-up period of 14 years, showed that the 33% reduction in child
mortality all occurred during the initial period of greatest investment in CHWs. After this
period there was a decline in political and financial support for the programme, and no
significant impact was measured subsequently. Although it is plausible that the CHWs were
responsible for the mortality reduction, attribution would have been strengthened if potential
confounders, such as improved access to health services through the construction of roads,
had been studied and adjusted for.
CHW programmes can only be effective insofar as they deliver effective interventions.
Only three studies provided any evaluation of which particular treatments delivered by the
CHWs were responsible for the measured effects. In two of the included studies, the CHW
interventions were randomised to include, or not include, malarial chemoprophylaxis [24,26]
while one study randomised the delivery of ITNs by CHWs [27]. The results demonstrated
that it was these preventive interventions as delivered by the CHWs, and not the other
activities of the CHWs alone, which reduced childhood mortality. ITNs and malarial
chemoprophylaxis are high-efficacy interventions and it is possible other interventions, such
as health education, may be delivered equally well but without demonstrable impact.
However, other attributes of the CHWs, such as their standing in the community, may have
contributed to their effectiveness when they delivered ITNs and malarial chemoprophylaxis.
This review was limited in scope to CHW programmes delivering curative interventions,
with or without preventive ones, since it was concerned with the effectiveness of CHWs in
improving access to health care rather than with their role in primary prevention. However
these findings suggest that policymakers should prioritise these and other highly efficacious
preventive interventions for application in CHW programmes.
Generalisation of this review’s findings across Africa is problematic, since all seven studies
occurred in West Africa and four were from The Gambia, with three having the same study
population. These Gambian studies were undertaken in the 1980s, when government
spending on primary health care exceeded that of hospital care for the first time in the
Gambia [25]. Whilst villages were expected to generate payment for their CHWs, the nurses
who supervised, educated and supplied CHWs were centrally funded for this role. CHW
programmes in settings where there is less political will and financial investment may not
have the necessary support for effective implementation and may therefore not achieve the
impacts observed in these Gambian studies.
Further, the Gambian studies occurred in rural settings affected by seasonal malaria where a
short period of good adherence to ITNs or chemoprophylaxis may result in larger mortality
reductions than in settings where the malaria is less seasonal (such as Nigeria, Gabon and
the Congo) and where good adherence needs to be maintained throughout the year. Settings
where factors such as parasites’ drug sensitivities, mosquito biting habits and the
acceptability of ITNs and chemoprophylaxis differ from that in The Gambia are likely to
result in differing impacts from similar CHW interventions.
An additional factor in the Gambian studies was the involvement of the Gambian Medical
Research Council, which may have improved access to drugs and equipment or adherence to
interventions in the study areas.
The studies selected by this review included little assessment of intermediate or process
outcomes such as changes in health beliefs, increased use of primary care facilities or
community empowerment. The failure of many evaluations of complex interventions to
consider process issues adequately has been shown to limit the ability of investigators to
account for the effects (or lack of effects) of interventions [36,37]. For example, in
Greenwood and colleagues’ [26] study in the Gambia, deaths in the PHC group were
followed up and it was found that CHWs were frequently unavailable to children during the
early stages of a febrile illness. This was because CHWs often found it necessary to work in
the fields as their income from their role as a CHW was minimal. It would have been
interesting to have had data on whether those who survived had better access to CHWs, but
this was not reported.
Most studies did not report any unintended or adverse effects. However, the Navrongo
study [28] observed an increase in mortality, principally in the 12 to 23-month age group.
They speculated that mothers of children with diarrhoea and respiratory infections may have
sought advice and basic treatment from CHWs thereby delaying or preventing the delivery
of better treatment by more skilled providers in sub-district clinics. It is not possible to
assess the validity of this hypothesis since no empirical evidence for or against it is
presented. However this highlights the importance of considering and assessing potential
unintended effects in evaluations of CHW programmes.
The possible impacts of the interventions on equity were not specifically addressed in the
seven studies, although Hill and colleagues [25] found no significant differences in the
impacts of CHWs on the three local ethnic groups in their Gambian study. An earlier
systematic review of CHW interventions also found that impacts on equity were rarely
considered [4]. However, in all study settings, dispensaries and health centres were only
available in towns and large villages and were relatively inaccessible to rural villagers, so
overall inequities in access to primary medical care by geographic and socio-economic
status were likely to have been reduced by these village-based CHW interventions. The
question of how CHW programmes can be linked to other components of a health system
such as primary care facilities, health centres and private health care providers was also not
addressed by the studies included in our review.
This review has several potential limitations. Firstly, it is possible that some published and
unpublished CHW evaluations were not identified through the search strategies used.
However, considerable effort was made to identify additional studies through contacting the
authors of included studies and scanning the reference lists of existing books and papers.
Secondly, our focus on studies from Africa may limit the generalizability of the review
findings to other regions. Thirdly, our definition of CHWs may have excluded some cadres
that others would consider to be lay health workers.
Implications for research
Malaria, diarrhoea and pneumonia are of huge public health importance in sub-Saharan
Africa and if ITNs, antimalarials, antibiotics, oral rehydration solution and other simple
interventions were to be delivered at scale, millions of childhood deaths could be prevented
annually. CHW programmes represent an important policy option for delivering these
interventions in settings with limited human resources for health services and yet this review
reveals such programmes continue to be neglected as a research priority.
The finding in this review of additional evidence suggesting that CHWs delivering
antimalarial interventions, including preventive interventions only, can have a marked
impact highlights further the urgent need for rigorous studies of the effects of these
programmes on child mortality and morbidity. Once such primary studies have been
conducted, it may be useful to conduct another review of the effects of CHWs delivering
preventive interventions only.
Valid and reliable measurement of mortality is best obtained within a continuous
demographic surveillance system which reports births, deaths, and out- and in- migration
over a number of years [38]. With at least 23 such systems in sub-Saharan Africa now
participating in the INDEPTH network [39], the potential for conducting community-based
studies of the impacts of CHWs in Africa is more significant than ever before. Such studies
should assess intermediate and process outcomes not only to explain measured impacts, but
because such information helps policymakers determine whether the programme and impact
can be replicated in other settings. In this review, very little information on CHW
programme design and implementation was found (see 'Data Extraction: Characteristics
which determine the effectiveness of CHW Programmes' section). Presentation of such
information is also necessary for policy makers to consider the applicability of findings to
different settings and in order to be able to replicate the interventions that were evaluated
[40].
Although few studies were eligible for inclusion in this review, the reported mortality
reductions were substantial for programmes in which CHWs were responsible for delivering
ITNs or anti-malarial chemoprophylaxis [24, 26, 27]. Given the substantial improvement in
child survival from these two interventions when successfully delivered, cluster randomised
trials comparing the cost-effectiveness of delivery strategies involving CHWs compared
with alternative strategies are indicated. Where RCTs are not possible, CBA studies with
several years of observation and thorough documentation of likely confounders and process
indicators should be conducted [38] and can provide strong plausibility inferences [41].
Stepped-wedge designs [42], should be considered in the evaluation of planned programmes
as they take advantage of the typical incremental implementation of programmes across
sites.
The most informative of the studies included in this review focussed on CHW interventions
against malaria, a disease which is thought to account for 18% of under 5 year old mortality
in Africa [10]. More research is needed on CHW impacts on pneumonia and diarrhoea,
which are estimated to be responsible for 21% and 16% of child mortality in Africa,
respectively [10]. Although a meta-analysis of pneumonia case management found
community-based management achieved a mortality reduction of 27% [43], only one of the
eleven studies included was from Africa. This particular study [44] was excluded from this
review because it took place over 20 years ago.
Policymakers considering whether to implement CHW programmes need to consider other
factors in addition to the evidence on impact. Such factors include programme feasibility
(including costs), the low risk of adverse outcomes, acceptability, the potential for a large
effect, and other beneficial health and social outcomes. All of these have been described as
factors that would lower the threshold for the strength of the evidence needed before the
recommendation of a public health intervention [17]. Feasibility, acceptability and other
beneficial health and social outcomes will vary by context and local evidence is therefore
needed to inform recommendations regarding CHW implementation in any one setting [45].
Conclusion
Evidence from this review suggests that CHW programmes can have large impacts on child
mortality when these programmes deliver ITNs or malarial chemoprophylaxis in an endemic
malaria setting. Such reductions in mortality would bring about large gains in child survival
in sub-Saharan Africa if these programmes were implemented at scale. However, 30 years
after Alma-Ata there is still little evidence from Africa on the effectiveness of CHWs
delivering curative interventions against pneumonia and diarrhoea or comprehensive
packages of interventions against the major causes of mortality in children (pneumonia,
diarrhoea, malaria, and, in some settings, HIV). Large-scale rigorous studies, including
RCTs, are now urgently needed to provide policy makers with more evidence on the
effectiveness of CHW programmes on child mortality.
Author Contributions
JC conceived the research topic and formulated the methods with advice from DR and SL.
The data were extracted by JC and AL. JC wrote the first draft of the paper, and all authors
contributed to the analysis and interpretation of the data and reviewed and edited the
manuscript for important intellectual content. The opinions expressed are those of the
authors alone. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Competing interests
This study did not receive any research funding. The authors declare that they have no
competing interests.
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