Assignment name:

Impact of the Zambia Access to ACT Initiative (ZAAI)

Approx. value of the contract (in current US$):

US $ 553,416

Country: Zambia

Location within country: 8 Districts across Zambia, including Chadiza, Chama, Chinsali, Kasama, Lundazi, Milenge, Mwense, and Nyimba.

Duration of assignment (months): 3



Name of Client: The World Bank

Total No. of staff-months of the assignment: 190

Contact Person, Title/Designation, Tel. No./Address:

Monique Vledder, The World Bank, 1818 H Street, NW, Washington, DC 20433, USA

Email: [email protected], Phone: +1 (202) 458-2518

Start date (month/year): March 2009

Completion date (month/year): June 2009

No. of professional staff-months provided by your consulting firm/organization or your sub consultants: 190

Name of associated Consultants, if any: N/A





Name of senior professional staff of your consulting firm/organization involved and designation and/or functions performed (e.g. Project Director/Coordinator, Team Leader):

Prof. Gelson Tembo – Survey Coordinator/Principal Investigator (PI);

Batista Chilopa – Sample Survey Specialist

Alice Tembo – Master Trainer/Field Manager

Colby Nyasulu – Master Trainer/Field Manager

Aaron Phiri – Sampling Frame/GIS Specialist

Doreen Goma – Master Trainer/Field Manager

Description of Project:

The Zambia Access to Artemisinin Combination Therapy (ACT) Initiative (ZAAI) as a World Bank–supported, GRZ-requested operational research and impact evaluation designed to close the gap in malaria case management by testing how best to increase timely access to artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) and diagnostics (RDTs) through a combination of public-sector supply-chain innovations, private-sector ACT/RDT subsidies with provider training/accreditation, and complementary community-based strategies, and then generating evidence on effectiveness and cost-effectiveness to guide national policy and scale-up. The core survey scope for the baseline round contracted under the Purchase Order was a household survey of 2,700 households plus a community-level survey, covering 8 districts (Chadiza, Nyimba, Chama, Mwense, Chinsali, Lundazi, Kasama, and Milenge) across Eastern, Northern, and Luapula Provinces, with 180 sampled communities (15 households per community). The broader study design specified two survey waves one year apart—a baseline in May–June 2009 and a follow-up in May–June 2010—to control for seasonality, while the Purchase Order’s implementation window for the baseline assignment ran from 23 March to 30 June 2009.

Description of actual services provided by your staff within the assignment:

Under the ZAAI baseline Purchase Order and ToR, Palm Associates (with GeoHydro for GIS) was responsible for delivering the complete end-to-end data-collection and data-management package for the ZAAI household and community baseline surveys within the agreed period of performance (23 March–30 June 2009): working closely with the World Bank task team to finalize (including translate) and print the questionnaires and to support submission of the ethical clearance package; recruiting, contracting, training and supervising all required staff (including senior field/data quality leads, master trainers—including a medical trainer—supervisors, GIS specialists/interviewers, medical specialists for the RDT/haemoglobin/anthropometry module, data-entry operators and drivers); securing offices and equipment and procuring survey consumables (e.g., GPS and medical/biomarker and anthropometric tools); implementing the sample design per WB guidelines (PSU selection, listing/screening, selection of survey and replacement households, and computation of sampling weights); conducting the defined household and community interviews; building and running a computerized double-entry CSPro data-entry system (including control files/templates), supervising and verifying data entry, and transferring data regularly to enable QA feedback; and delivering the agreed outputs—cleaned datasets suitable for public use and a summary/data report (with variable definitions and univariate distributions), plus required field reporting.