The Development Intervention, ‘NEXTCAP’, builds on experiences, knowledge, collaboration networks and capacities built in a successful CISU-funded Citizen Participation Intervention, ‘NETCAP-DIB’, which took place throughout 2018 in two rural indigenous Amazon communities, Tumupasa and Buena Vista, in the San Buenaventura municipality of the La Paz department in Bolivia. The NEXTCAP intervention will expand the target region and types of communities, extend the health issues in question and involve more stakeholders, actors and methods to reach the objectives described below.
The overall objective
is to improve the livelihood of environmentally challenged and poor rural communities in the Bolivian Amazon. These
communities are threatened by a high occurrence of serious and emerging (but many
times undetected) infectious diseases,
which are commonly zoonotic (i.e.
they spread between humans and animals including wildlife) and/or are vector-borne
(i.e. they spread via insects such
as ticks and mosquitoes). They are recognised societal burdens due to lost work force and mental disabilities in many
similar regions of South America and other tropical regions of the world. Despite
an alarming occurrence documented
both in the NETCAP-DIB intervention and reported in recent clinical outbreaks in the region these diseases are often neglected in the Bolivian health system
due to lack of capacities, knowledge and resources.
The diseases in question emerge due to environmental and climate changes, and ultimately due to regional and external economic and social drivers. This calls for a ‘One Health approach’, which builds on the understanding that cross-sectorial collaboration, interdisciplinary research and a high degree of bottom-up participatory capacity building are needed to mitigate the effect of such complex health issues. A One Health approach proved feasible and beneficial in the NETCAP-DIB project. Hence, in the hereby proposed intervention, the approach will be based on a mix of empowerment of local civil communities and households including women, school children, parents, school teachers and forest or farm workers through educational initiatives, regional capacity building and improvement of networks between local health centres, laboratories, universities and health authorities. Standing on this foundation we will provide advocacy for sustainable health solutions in the target region.