Dedza distribution of 245,000 nets, Weeks 1 to 4
Summary
Good progress, 139,549 nets distributed so far. The distribution is going well with no major issues.
Challenges
We encourage our partners to not hold back on reporting negative occurrences as we understand things can go wrong and plans have to adapt. We are obviously interested in the scale of any issues but are often more interested in how issues are resolved.
Concern Universal Malawi has been impressive in being entirely transparent with their reports and it is one factor that has led us to work with them repeatedly.
The challenges faced so far have been:
1. An isolated incident of 300 nets missing from one storage location. This is being investigated and pursued with the police as any nets missing is taken very seriously. 300 nets represents 0.12% of the total nets being distributed.
2. An inability to distribute nets in a number of villages, and the need to reschedule a net distribution, due to:
- misplacing villages in the wrong distribution clusters leading to an incorrect number of nets at a distribution point (being addressed through improved checking)
- a lack of communication by local health workers to village leaders (this is being addressed)
- some villages busy with elections, weddings or initiation ceremonies that were foreseeable (being factored into the timing of the distributions in the remaining villages)
- deliberate duplicate registration of some beneficiaries (the nature of our verficiation procedures catches this sort of activity and the registration data was corrected)
- issues with the identification of some beneficiaries due to illiteracy (resolution achieved with assistance from the village leader)
The above issues are considered by CU and AMF to be avoidable and lessons will be learned from them.
The following issues are considered to be largely unavoidable and are elements that have to be dealt with as they arise:
- a truck breakdown
- funerals taking place involving a significant portion of the village (sometimes a distribution can be moved to a nearby village; often a rescheduling is required)
Finally, a comment in the Week 1 report:
"Many villagers demonstrated their appreciation regarding the manner in which the net distributions were conducted, which they described as the most transparent ever done. This was achieved due to the involvement and participation of the local leaders and provision of a copy of the distribution register to the respective village head."