Earth Institute's Millennium Villages Community Health Worker Training Program

In 2009, with support from The Merck Company Foundation, the Earth Institute at Columbia University launched a community health worker training program to strengthen community health services for more than 400,000 people in 10 African countries, as part of the Millennium Villages Project (MVP). The initiative aims to advance the development of a professional cadre of community health workers to fill a critical gap in the delivery of primary healthcare for rural communities throughout Africa. The program will ensure that participating community health workers are skilled, well trained, properly remunerated, regularly supervised and fully integrated into their countries' healthcare systems. To date, MVP has trained approximately 900 community health workers across the 14 Millennium Village sites. The Merck Company Foundation has renewed its support over three years (2011-2013) for the MVP community health worker program to help scale up primary care systems across Africa.

Management and Leadership Academy

With support from the Merck Company Foundation, the BroadReach Institute for Training and Education (BRITE) is implementing the rollout of their Management and Leadership Academy (MLA) program in Zambia. The MLA program teaches critical management and leadership skills for healthcare professionals to build and strengthen the capacity of local health systems. This program aims to equip healthcare workers with the knowledge and skills to lead, own and transform the delivery of healthcare in their own countries. BRITE is also working with Abt Associates in implementing the MLA program and is receiving additional support under the USAID-funded Zambia Integrated Systems Strengthening Program (ZISSP). BRITE and ZISSP are working in close partnership with the Ministry of Health in Zambia to support the Ministry's ongoing efforts to develop management and leadership capacity at different levels of the health system.

Merck Vaccine Network-Africa

As part of our commitment to the GAVI Alliance (GAVI), Merck initiated in 2003 the Merck Vaccine Network - Africa (MVN-A), a multiyear philanthropic initiative supported by the Merck Company Foundation, to help increase the capacity of national immunization programs in Africa by supporting collaborative partnerships in the development of sustainable immunization training programs. Each of four collaborative partnerships spanning academia, non-governmental organizations, Ministries of Health and multilateral organizations (e.g., WHO, UNICEF) and has developed a customized immunization management training program to address gaps formally identified in each country's national immunization program. In support of GAVI's mission of increasing children's access to vaccines and strengthening delivery systems in the world's poorest countries, MVN-A training programs in Kenya, Mali, Uganda and Zambia provide hands-on training in vaccine management and immunization services and, to date, have trained more than 1,000 immunization managers in all four countries.

Pneumococcal Disease Prevention and Capacity Building

Over the course of three-year phased programs in Nicaragua and Honduras, Merck committed to donate 1.7 million doses of PNEUMOVAX^® 23 (Pneumococcal Vaccine Polyvalent) and provide charitable grants amounting to US$1.0 million to Project HOPE in support of efforts to vaccinate vulnerable populations against pneumococcal infections, a major cause of pneumonia. In partnership with the Nicaraguan and Honduran Ministries of Health, and utilizing grant funding from Merck, Project HOPE is improving the capacity of each national immunization program by training health workers to plan and implement successful vaccination campaigns. Project HOPE is also providing vital equipment and supplies to each Ministry of Health, including refrigerators required for the proper storage of vaccines and computers to help monitor and evaluate immunization activities as the initiatives progress in both countries. Through innovative public-private partnerships, Merck is delivering upon its commitment to improve access to our vaccines and help build healthcare capacity in lowest-income countries, including Nicaragua and Honduras.

Merck MECTIZAN Donation Program

The delivery strategy known as Community-Directed Treatment with Ivermectin (CDTI), championed by the World Health Organization and piloted in the delivery of MECTIZAN^® (ivermectin), has enabled communities to organize, direct and manage their own treatment, with more than 125,000 communities now responsible for MECTIZAN treatment. In the CDTI model, each community selects and supports their own distributors who are then trained in financial management, computer skills, operational research, basic medical skills and technical writing. Since 1998, more than 470,000 community-directed distributors in 16 African countries received this training. Learn more.