Mozambique Agentes Polivalentes Elementares Program

Mozambique's national community health worker program, first launched in 1978 as part of a post-independence health policy built on broad, equitable access to primary health care for the country's largely rural population. Agentes Polivalentes Elementares, or APEs, were trained to promote health and prevent disease, deliver first aid, treat common illnesses such as malaria and diarrhea, and refer more serious cases to the nearest health facility, but the program deteriorated through the 1980s and into the mid-1990s as Mozambique's sixteen-year civil war devastated the health system and left APEs without supervision or support, eventually halting new implementation altogether. The government revitalized the program in 2010, formally relaunching it as a national APE strategy and expanding the role to include integrated community case management of childhood pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria, restoring a community-based layer of care that the war had interrupted for roughly two decades.