Malawi NCDI Poverty Commission

A recent training session showed that skills such as mentoring, proficiency in giving effective feedback, and being able to assess patient experiences accurately can be as vital to quality care as medical equipment and resources.

Five years. Twenty-nine countries. Over a hundred PEN-Plus clinics. More than 14,000 patients. Together, the many collaborators that compose the NCDI Poverty Network deliver hope and healthcare to children, adolescents, and young adults navigating the dual challenges of poverty and severe, chronic noncommunicable diseases. And this is just the beginning.

During the opening plenary of the Sept. 25 High-Level Meeting on NCDs and Mental Health, at the UN General Assembly in New York City, repeated mentions of PEN-Plus as a successful strategy for addressing NCDs formed a show of unity in a week often noted for dissension.

A recently published study of people living with type 1 diabetes in two rural clinics in Malawi found a high level of acceptability and satisfaction among those using continuous glucose monitoring, suggesting that the technology is feasible in low-income settings.

Integration science can do more than deliver quality healthcare; it can also deliver global health equity solutions. That’s the central premise of “From Local Innovation to National Scale to Global Impact: Integration Science as an Engine of Change and an Agenda for Action,” the second annual symposium of the Center for Integration Science in Global Health Equity.

“It is inconceivable that a 20-year-old man would weigh only 55 pounds,” said Bright Mailosi, a specialist in noncommunicable diseases. “So much could have been done to intervene when he was first diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Although I wish PEN-Plus had arrived in Karonga years earlier, I’m excited that we’ve changed the narrative of how complex NCDs are managed in rural areas.”

Efforts to expand PEN-Plus across sub-Saharan Africa received a major boost today, when the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust announced a $9 million grant to the World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa to expand care for people living with severe noncommunicable diseases (NCDs).

More than 60 representatives of leading global health policy, technical, advocacy, and financing institutions and people living with NCDs gathered at UNICEF House in New York on September 15, 2022, to introduce the PEN-Plus Partnership, a major international initiative to address the global burden of severe NCDs and injuries that cause more than 500,000 avoidable deaths every year among children and young adults living in extreme poverty.

The stepped-wedge cluster randomized controlled trial evaluated expanding an existing HIV and tuberculosis community health worker program to include NCDs, malnutrition, and tuberculosis screening, as well as family planning and antenatal care.

The Malawi PEN-Plus Steering Committee held its first meeting on 16 September 2021. The Steering Committee will oversee implementation of the Malawi PEN-Plus Operational Plan adopted in May.

On May 27, 2021, Malawi took a major step toward national scale-up of integrated chronic care services at district hospitals for severe NCDs affected children and young adults with the official launch of its PEN-Plus Operational Plan.

Malawi's Minister of Health and Population, the Honorable Atupele Muluzi (front row center, in the photo above), formally launched the Malawi NCDI Poverty Commission Report on August 21, at an event attended by over 100 stakeholders at the Sunbird Capital Hotel in Lilongwe.