Examining Childhood Malaria Prevention in Mozambique

Hansel Mundaca Hurtado, MD, MMSc '24

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Hansel is a physician with 8 years of experience treating infectious diseases in impoverished populations and working in clinical research in Peru, Mozambique and Kenya. Initially he worked as a primary care physician in the remote indigenous Peruvian Amazon. Later, he started a career in clinical research in Partners In Health(Peru) in the ENDTB study, a clinical trial evaluating newly approved drugs for multidrug-resistant Tuberculosis. In 2020, he joined the Barcelona Institute for GlobalHealth (ISGlobal) in Spain, where he led the safety package of BOHEMIA, a cluster-clinical trial evaluating Ivermectin as a vector control intervention for malaria in Mozambique and Kenya

All study participants gave permission for their photos to be taken and shared. Caregivers gave consent for children to be photographed and for their photos to be shared. 

Anahi Strader interview 2023

Student Perspectives

Read more experiences from other students in class of 2024
Read more experiences from other students
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Dr. Magumbe is new at Mopeia Hospital. He describes that the availability of safe, affordable, and efficacious biomedicine is not enough, but timely access to it must be secured by avoiding inconsiderate and discriminative attitudes toward patients by healthcare professionals.

Hansel Mundaca conducting interviews

I immersed myself in the workings of Mopeia Rural Hospital to understand how it functions. Here, I sign for a one-day shift in the hospital.

Moving in and living within a community in rural Mozambique as a medical investigator provided me with insight into an existing divorce between the vertical design of malaria interventions endorsed by international health bureaucracies and the attention to the socio-economic factors rooted in the rural Sub-Saharan context (i.e. hesitancy for allopathic medicine, agricultural and labor migration patterns).

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In this photo, I am visiting the household of a Mopeia rural dweller as part of the administration of a district census questionnaire inquiring about health status, economics, access to healthcare, and local health practices. ​ 

This participant and his two under-five children live in a malaria highly endemic rural district. This photo illustrates the project´s inquiry into the sociopolitical, geographic, and economic factors shaping the care-seeking journey for severe malaria.

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Opedia, an experienced nurse at Mopeia Hospital, comments about the supplies needed to treat severe malaria in children. She emphasizes avoiding a shortage of IV systems, which could hinder the timely administration of intravenous Artesunate, a potent drug for treating Plasmodium falciparum malaria.

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I served as an attending physician in the outpatient clinic. In Mopeia, impoverished single mothers are the most common guardians for children with fever. They wrap their children in colorful sheets known as  capulanas,and walk for up to three hours barefoot to reach the dispensary. Preoccupation with their children's sickness keeps them from earning a livelihood and generating savings, enduring their social suffering. 

Read more about the Master of Medical Sciences in Global Health Delivery program here.