Essential Malaria Action Guide for Kenyan Families

This Essential Malaria Action (EMA) guide, developed with a coalition of partners and published by the Division of Malaria Control (DoMC) Kenya, is designed to assist district health managers, health workers, and non-governmental organisation (NGO) partners in planning and implementing malaria social and behaviour change communication (SBCC) activities at community level. The guide seeks to ensure harmonisation of communication approaches and promotes seven essential malaria actions that fall into four categories: long-lasting insecticide-treated net (LLIN) use, malaria case management, indoor residual spraying, and prevention of malaria during pregnancy.
The guide seeks to enable district health teams, partners, and stakeholders implementing advocacy, communication, and social mobilisation (ACSM) activities to:

• Systematically follow a SBCC approach to select the appropriate malaria communication interventions;
• Harmonise their messaging so that it focuses on the performance of essential actions by the target audience; and
• Eliminate approaches that no longer support malaria control.

In recognition of the fact that communities have barriers to adopting desired actions, the EMA guide also outlines some of the myths/misconceptions and frequently asked questions related to selected malaria interventions so as to prepare the users to counter these anticipated barriers at the community and household levels.