Description
Malaria Consortium is one of the world's leading non-profit organisations dedicated to the comprehensive control of malaria and other communicable diseases in Africa and Southeast Asia. Malaria Consortium works with communities, government and non-government agencies, academic institutions, and local and international organisations, to ensure good evidence supports delivery of effective services, providing technical support for monitoring and evaluation of programmes and activities for evidence-based decision-making and strategic planning. The organisation works to improve not only the health of the individual, but also the capacity of national health systems, which helps relieve poverty and support improved economic prosperity.
Country and Project Background:
Malaria Consortium is going to implement a two year grant to carry out operational research on pneumonia diagnostic tools in Cambodia, Ethiopia, Uganda and South Sudan. Acquisition of a non-invasive clinical sample, distinguishing clinical disease from disease carriage, continues to present a problem in pneumonia diagnosis. In rural settings where integrated community case management is available, community health workers (CHWs) have been trained to diagnose pneumonia using colored beads and/or a simple respiratory rate timer available from UNICEF. This timer is not without its challenges, with the correct respiratory rate count often affected by factors such as movement of the child, irregularities in the child’s breathing requiring the health worker to start counting all over again, and frequently the health worker may count the tick of the timer’s clock rather than the child’s breathing rate. If after the respiratory rate is determined and antibiotics are not indicated, the result is often challenged by the parent or caregiver as they strongly believe that their child should receive treatment, irrespective of the respiratory rate measurement.
To overcome the challenges with existing respiratory rate counting devices, several research groups have developed easy to use applications (“Apps”) for use on mobile phones. A limited number of the mobile phone respiratory rate Apps have been evaluated in small, often statistically underpowered clinical studies, but there has not been a comprehensive comparison of the clinical performance, usability and acceptability of multiple Apps in an endemic setting. Similarly, technologies such as accelerometry have been applied to respiratory rate measurement and the clinical performance and usability of these methods in endemic settings is unknown. A priority need is clinical evaluation of these new technologies compared to the UNICEF timer, including an assessment of the acceptability and usability of these new approaches from the perspective of the short trained community health worker, clinical staff working in peripheral facilities and below the level of registered nurse, as well as the caregiver.
POSITION: Field Office Accountant
LOCATION: Rattanakiri province
SALARY: Gross salary $984/month