What’s next: Rotary Healthy Communities Challenge
The success of Partners for a Malaria-Free Zambia led Rotary, the Gates Foundation, and World Vision to scale the project even further. The result was the Rotary Healthy Communities Challenge, which is expanding the proven community health worker model to reduce severe disease and death from not only malaria but also pneumonia and diarrhea, among the top killers worldwide of children under 5.
With Rotary members leading the work, the program is being implemented in 2024-27 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Zambia. Here’s a look at what’s been accomplished so far.
Democratic Republic of Congo
Despite an Ebola outbreak, supply delays, and insecurity that forced the program’s target areas to decrease from three provinces to one, the program was able to deploy health workers to areas that had never seen health care before.
1,097 community health workers trained
Mozambique
In the program’s first year, Mozambique faced postelection instability and heavy rains, making some communities difficult to access. Still, program leaders began tapping into existing training structures and engaging with communities to create demand.
122 community health workers and 2,852 community health volunteers trained
Nigeria
Program leaders helped support the government’s new community health worker strategy and worked to strengthen government partnership.
706 community health workers trained
Zambia
The program’s work in Zambia will focus on some of the final locations in need of community health workers. In the first year, program leaders worked to refine data collection systems to incorporate pneumonia and diarrhea in addition to malaria.
1,462 community health workers trained
*all figures as of February 2026