The Buzz Off Malaria seminars recently held in Yangon, Myanmar were a great success. 47 malaria workers were trained some coming form very remote areas in order to attend the seminars. The training took the form of 2 x 3 day Seminars, which were held in different locations around Yangon.

The seminar were lecturers included Kathy Kennedy, Dr Marcus Winn a local Malaria expert and  David Skeat. Topics covered included, a background to Malaria, Malaria the disease, diagnosis and testing, the mosquito, protection and prevention, Malaria and the pregnant woman, Malaria and HIV, anti malarial medication, strategies and plans, communicating the message. A work book in Burmese was created for the seminars and is being updated and revised for use in future seminars.

The first seminar saw more young people than the second. The seminars were well received and comments made by the students helped us to gauge that we are on the right track and will be assessing the form the next seminars we will take. We feel that there is need for more processing time, however the length of these seminars were dictated to us by the circumstances of the groups we were training.

We have also been asked by the students to develop flip charts and other resources that they can use in community education programs. This we are looking into.

We also received back from most of the students copies of our Needs Assessment which they researched and filled out for their communities. These will need to be translated before we can analyse the information.

Buzz Off has been asked to run more seminars in yangon later in the year and there is also talk of a seminar in Shan State.

Donations towards Buzz Off will help us to develop and further extend the work of these Malaria Training Seminars.

Your donation to could train a Malaria worker and help to save a life.

You can donate to Buzz Off through our secure site or using PayPal.