Assessment of Capacity and Readiness of Provincial Health Staff for Moving towards Malaria Elimination in Thailand

Abstract

Malaria Elimination is an important policy and plan undertakings by Ministry of Public Health, Thailand in this century. The Bureau of Vector Borne Disease, Department of Disease Control, Thailand, has also targeted the entire country to be malaria free zone by the year 2024, together with 10 other countries in Southeast Asia. The Malaria Control Program of Thailand was operated as a vertical program in the past; but nowadays it has been integrated in the provincial health system. Due to this transformation, we would like to assess the knowledge and attitude of program staff on malaria elimination and to identify related training needs. It was carried out as a cross sectional qualitative study during November 2014 - August 2015. Data were collected through questionnaire survey and in-depth interview. Participants in the study were 61 health personnel from 48 public health offices in 3 provinces, Trat, Ranong and Tak. It was found that the basic knowledge of participants was at the middle level with the score range was 9-16 out of 20. The training needs included advanced courses on drug resistance and case investigation. We recommended to promote the role of district and subdistrict health personnel to learn and apply quality malaria detection and treatment activities at district health promotion hospitals and community health facilities. In conclusion, this assessment should be useful to plan and develop effective curriculum for public health staff in order to achieve malaria elimination.