Education towards the elimination of Malaria

On Monday, 12 October 2015 the University of Pretoria Centre (UP) for Sustainable Malaria Control (UP CSMC) Student Forum, in collaboration with the Faculty of Education at UP, presented a seminar titled ‘Education towards malaria elimination’. The event emanated from a new collaboration initiative between the UP CSMC and the Department of Early Childhood Education, in which students from the Centre and the Department will strive to contribute to the prevention and eventual elimination of malaria by devising educational strategies aimed at educating learners about the disease. Prof Ina Joubert, acting HOD of the Department of Early Childhood Education, and Dr Taneshka Kruger, Senior Malaria Coordinator at the UP CSMC, made a significant contribution to the UP CSMC Student Forum initiative.

Prof Irma Eloff, Dean of the Faculty of Education at UP, officially welcomed eager students and academics from various fields to the Postgraduate Research Commons at the Groenkloof Campus. She said she believes that, although researchers are often measured on the basis of the number articles published, the number of postgraduate students supervised or the amount of time spent on research, essentially what research is about – and should be about – is the impact it has on the world. She is extremely excited about the new initiative between the Faculty of Education and the UP CSMC and is looking forward to seeing the results of the collaborative efforts that will be undertaken.

Following Prof Eloff’s inspiring welcome message, Prof Norman Duncan, Vice-Principal: Academic, gave a short presentation on trans-disciplinary research and education. Prof Duncan said that the nature of many contemporary phenomena require that we locate our thinking at the interface between disciplines or beyond disciplines. The seminar was unambiguous in its signalling of the commitment of the two faculties (Education and Health Sciences) to strengthen their contribution to UP’s vision of enhancing its status as a research-intensive university. Prof Duncan said it is heartening to know that at UP researchers are not simply going through the motions of doing research as exemplified by the old adage of ‘publish or perish’, but that they actually want to make a practical contribution to the world we live in, and chart new terrain. This disposition will enable UP to become an institution known for being on the cutting edge of innovative research. This can however only happen if we find ourselves in a place where we can share perspectives, ideals, methodologies and approaches with people from diverse backgrounds. Prof Duncan said that it is this type of interdisciplinary approach that will give us lasting solutions to the problems we are facing, including malaria. In conclusion he said that he was enormously impressed by the fact that students would organise themselves into a forum to conduct trans-disciplinary or interdisciplinary research and expressed the hope that students in other faculties would take note and follow suit.

The keynote address for the day titled, ‘The mosquito on the black board: Separating the lived experience from community trends using mixed methods research’, was delivered by Prof Linda Liebenberg from the Faculty of Graduate Studies at Dalhousie University, Canada. Prof Liebenberg’s presentation gave students valuable insight into maximising the research tools at their disposal to ensure that what they do and find during their research has the greatest possible impact on the communities that they work with.

Prof Liebenberg’s insightful and entertaining address was followed by presentations by post-graduate students in the Department of Early Childhood Education who had devised a variety of fun and creative educational plans that included simple songs, rhymes and stories that children could learn in the foundation phase to educate them about malaria. The students’ excitement and passion for their projects was evident in the amount of work they put into preparing puppets and models of mosquitoes for their presentations.

Four of these students (three MEd and one PhD) are the first to examine what primary school learners are being taught about malaria at school. They will also look at the effects of malaria on education owing to absenteeism of learners and teachers. Finally, they will determine if and how malaria awareness and education can be incorporated in the school curriculum. Their work will pave the way for more research on malaria education in schools.

Investing in the education of young children by making them aware of malaria and how the disease is transmitted will go a long way towards lessening the burden of the disease. It is hoped that by focussing educational efforts on a new generation, the information will be passed on to parents and other community members and trigger lifestyle changes that could contribute towards the complete elimination of malaria in Africa. According to Prof Tiaan de Jager, Director of the UP CSMC, it is essential to include communities in the fight against malaria.

The trans-disciplinary approach to and new initiatives in education and health promotion build strongly on the book, Sibo fights malaria, launched by the UP CSMC in 2014. Together with high impact research, this might just be what the country needs to move from malaria control to elimination.

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Researchers

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  Dr Taneshka Kruger

  Dr Taneshka Kruger has been doing research at the University of Pretoria (UP) since 2012, which was when she did her postdoctoral fellowship on an innovative malaria mosquito vector control method. She joined the UP Institute for Sustainable Malaria Control (ISMC) as project manager and coordinator in the same year. Dr Kruger is also responsible for marketing the institute, and her research focus contributes to this.
  
  Her research focus is innovative and novel malaria education and health promotion as proactive malaria transmission prevention methods and strategies. A large proportion of malaria deaths occur annually in children under five years of age. Dr Kruger’s research and communication initiatives often have her working directly with malaria-endemic communities, especially with young children of primary school age, in the rural Vhembe District in northeast Limpopo. The aim is to raise malaria awareness and to teach children how to prevent contracting the disease.
  
  Malaria is still a major public health concern, with hundreds of thousands of people dying annually from the disease, despite it being both preventable and treatable. Dr Kruger says her research matters because it contributes towards proactive malaria prevention strategies, specifically identifying novel education and health promotion interventions that have the potential to contribute towards malaria elimination.
  
  Dr Kruger is part of a cross-faculty research team at UP. In her capacity as project manager and coordinator at the UP ISMC, she works with a variety of researchers that specialise in many interesting fields and with a focus on malaria elimination. She recently collaborated with Dr Megan Riddin – of UP’s School of Health Systems and Public Health, and medical entomologist at UP ISMC – on mosquito vector biology and innovative control; Professor Walter Focke, of the Department of Chemical Engineering, on innovative malaria/mosquito repellents and control methods; and Prof Irma Eloff, of the Department of Education Psychology, on the use of culturally and age-appropriate songs to educate children about malaria.
  
  A recent research highlight for her was determining the most effective malaria intervention education method in primary schools. This research will be expanded further in the following year.
  
  Dr Kruger regards Prof Riana Bornman, senior research professor in the School of Health Systems and Public Health, as an inspiration because she is so devoted to what she does, which includes working with rural malaria-endemic communities. Dr Kruger adds that Prof Tiaan de Jager, director of the UP ISMC and Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, is her academic role model because of his vision to establish the transdisciplinary research entity that has brought together researchers from various disciplines working towards the elimination of malaria.
  
  Her advice to school learners or undergraduates who are interested in her field is to identify the one thing about this field, or any research field, that generates excitement for them, because that makes the hard work and challenges worth the while. She adds that by focusing on the one thing that brings joy, the rest will fall in place.
  
  In her spare time, Dr Kruger enjoys scuba diving.
  

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  Education towards the elimination of Malaria