Health education to promote community involvement in the control of tropical diseases

Health Education is any combination of learning activities that promote voluntary adaptations in health-related behaviour. In pursuing this definition, health workers generally work in two main directions, a community development approach and a behavioristic, communications approach. While Health Education in tropical, developing countries often takes the developmental approach with full community involvement, including the setting of programme priorities, Health Education for disease control has more often been characterized as the behavioristic mode utilizing simplistic, professionally determined messages and short-term campaigns to attempt to influence health behaviours related to disease transmission. Efforts in Idere, Nigeria, have tried to merge the two approaches building on community concern about one endemic tropical disease, Guinea worm. From this base, volunteer village health worker (VHW) training was developed. VHWs, once trained, developed their own association, which served as an organizational base for further health development programming, directed by the VHWs themselves.