Left,Jill Irvin with Larry Casazza, MD MPH and Jackie Eiting

Larry Casazza, MD MPH

Larry Casazza is a public health specialist working in malaria and childhood survival programs for several decades. He has dedicated his career, spanning twenty-five years, to implementing community-based activities aimed at improving the health and welfare of women and children with an emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa .

Currently he is the Director of ACAM, African Communities Against Malaria. He has also held senior positions at World Vision and the CORE Group in Roll Back Malaria/IMCI programming, and currently serves as a faculty member at Johns Hopkins University ‘s Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Casazza holds a Master’s in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University and Medical Doctorate from University of the State of New York at Buffalo .

For the effective and scaled implementation of RBM programs, the existing malaria and child survival expertise of NGOs and other community-based resources must be coupled with improved management capability to ensure the coordination and effective use of existing resources. Only then can the Abuja and MDG targets for malaria prevention and control be reached by African nations. To date, four RBM NGO secretariats, with support from USAID’s funding of the CORE Group, have formed for this purpose. More are needed, either newly established or aligned within existing organizational structures.

Resume

Jill Irvin

Jill Irvin serves as the leader for Alder Associates strategy competency and specializes in business strategy and operating model development. Her skills include global growth strategy, operations and cost restructuring, governance design, and business re-engineering.

With clients, Jill works closely with executive teams and business leaders to develop and articulate breakthrough business strategy and develop rigorous models for strategy implementation. Her unique approach to the development of strategic initiatives and executive-board program management provides key insights into cultural, political, and organization issues posing barriers to strategy realization.

Jill has led numerous strategy engagements across North America and Europe including work at DuPont, Budget Group, Salt River Project, Partner’s Healthcare, and Ingersoll-Rand. While her work primarily focuses on Fortune 500 clients, Jill’s capabilities have translated into entrepreneurial environments, designing and launching new business ventures across multiple industries.

Before joining Alder Associates, Jill was a principal in Computer Science Corporation’s (CSC) Strategic Services Practice where she managed client and practice

Jackie Eiting

Jackie Eiting creates breakthrough performance for large organizations by integrating senior executive development with business strategy implementation. Jackie has over 20 years experience in transformational coaching, large-scale change and executive development, and has worked with major corporations in the US and Europe .

Prior to co-founding Alder Associates, Jackie held partnerships in Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) Transformation and Change Group and Charlie Smith & Associates, a leading transformational consulting firm. Jackie has also established her own consulting practice specializing in executive coaching, executive team development and leadership development.

Jackie has led engagements at Ingersoll-Rand, DuPont Legal, The Limited Corporation, General Growth Management Properties, The Rouse Company, EMCO Ltd. Canada, IBM Corporation, Cunnard-Ellerman Shipping, Marrion Merrill Dow, Inc., Campbell Soup Company Canada, Land Rover Corporation, US Air Force, Aeronautical Research, and Procter & Gamble.

Jackie earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Northwestern University and a Masters of Psychiatric Social Work from The University of Hawaii

Foundational Statement from the Director

Malaria is killing far too many African children, and blighting the lives of many millions more. Over a million people die of malaria each year and 90 percent of these tragic losses occur in Africa – most of them in young children. A society cannot progress if it is losing its younger generation at such a rate.

Malaria not only attacks the poorest societies, it keeps them poor. Annual economic growth in countries with high malaria transmission has historically been lower than that in countries without malaria. Economists calculate this difference as a growth “penalty” from malaria of 1.3%. Over time this penalty has pushed the poorest countries 32% behind wealthier countries. In dollar terms, that is a cost of more than US$12 billion annually in Africa alone. In human terms, it means a desperate struggle for poor families who spend as much as a quarter of their income in battling malaria, who have to cope with lost hours as they deal with children whose learning is impaired by missing school, and whose development can be hampered by neurological or other damage from the disease; it means equally desperate efforts by health systems when their hospitals and clinics are overwhelmed by the annual malaria epidemic and they have no resources to mount sustainable control campaigns

We need to move fast before this dreadful holocaust of Africa ‘s young grows worse. Today there are evidence-based, cost-effective interventions. The challenge is to deliver them where they are needed.

The Need

Why have Africans not availed themselves of solutions readily to hand, such as insecticide treated nets (ITNs) which are a proven protection for children from the bites of infectious insects? As Bill Gates has observed: “Bed nets cost just a few dollars each, but only a small fraction of African children sleep under one.” One explanation for this apparent indifference of parents is poverty. Bed nets may cost “just a few dollars”, but for many parents that is more than a week’s pay. When families must feed and clothe their children, provide drugs to treat their malaria, absorb the cost of days missed as they try to get them to the doctor for treatment – the cost of a bed net can be out of reach.

First Steps towards Roll Back Malaria

A critical first step was achieved in 2000 when the Abuja Declaration made the assault on malaria Africa-wide and from the top-down. In the nine years since then a great deal has been done. The key tools in the battle have been identified; they are:

• Insecticide- treated nets (ITNs). ITNs have been shown to reduce mortality among children under 5 by over 20 percent. This means the prevention of half a million deaths every year in sub-Saharan Africa . ITNs also protect pregnant women and young children from malarial anemia, which in the very young can lead to brain damage and death. A recent development of long-lasting, wash-resistant ITNs which will remain effective for up to at least five years: they avoid the need to re-treat the nets, something which has proved difficult to sustain, and even further enhances the value of this brilliantly simple intervention.
• Intermittent preventive treatment. Intermittent treatment of pregnant women with sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) has been shown to reduce the risk of maternal anemia, placental parasitemia, and low-birth weight and is now being integrated into the malaria control programs of most African countries. While further research is needed, there are promising signs that prophylactic treatment of infants too can reduce episodes of malaria.
• Antimalarial drug combination therapy (ACT). ACT is the combination of an anti-malarial drug with artesunate, a derivative of the Chinese plant, Artemisia annua; it can markedly improve cure rates for malaria. Furthermore, ACTs will reduce the reservoir of humans positive with the parasite, thus breaking the malaria cycle. Coartem©, a combination of artemether and Lumefantrine is one of the commonly available combinations. The challenge is financing these promising drug combinations depending on the country-specific policies. Fortunately today in many countries now recipients of Global Fund awards, ACTs are being made available on a wider scale and the transition to this preferred case management policy is supported with staff training and logistics of supplies.
• Improving access to effective anti-malarial treatment. The majority of deaths from severe malaria in children are caused by delays in getting effective treatment. Death can occur in a matter of hours – so novel ways of minimizing delays are needed, including, for instance, training local shopkeepers in administering the right drugs in the right doses to a child immediately for whom the trip to a clinic might be fatally delayed.
• Strengthening the health infrastructure. For parents to undertake the difficult and costly journey to a health facility, they must be confident the treatment there will be worth it. Presently, health facilities are under-stocked and staff inadequately trained in dealing with severe malaria.