EU partnership brings community care closer to Lesotho’s rural areas

The European Union is helping to strengthen Lesotho's health sector through a new Horizon Europe-funded project that will bring care for hypertension and diabetes closer to people in rural communities. The five-year ComBaScaLe initiative will support Village Health Workers in Botha-Bothe and Mokhotlong to deliver integrated, evidence-based holistic package of integrated frontline care for hypertension, diabetes, HIV, and tuberculosis.

ComBaScaLe , short for Community-Based Scale up of integrated community health worker-led cardiovascular risk factor management, will equip community health workers in under-resourced areas with the tools and training they need to manage blood pressure and diabetes safely and effectively. By building on their existing work in HIV and tuberculosis screening, the project aims to create a more joined-up model of care for communities that often face multiple health challenges at once.

A dedicated app will help guide treatment decisions, while the project will also explore cost-effectiveness and barriers to care, including stigma and gender dynamics. Community members and people with lived experience will help shape the programme from the outset, ensuring it responds to local realities and priorities.

Lesotho is facing a growing burden of chronic disease, and ComBaScaLe will test a practical approach in two districts before packaging the lessons into a toolkit for wider use. All tools, training materials and key findings will be shared to support potential scale-up across Lesotho and beyond.

An international partnership grounded in local realities

The project brings together nine partners from Lesotho, Switzerland, Belgium, South Africa, Germany and the United Kingdom, including the Ministry of Health, the National University of Lesotho, SolidarMed, the University of Basel, the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp, the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the University of Glasgow. The Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp , through its Unit of HIV and TB, will coordinate the project.

Implementation of ComBaScaLe kicks off later in 2026, so keep your eyes peeled for more updates in due course.

About Horizon Europe

Horizon Europe is the European Union's flagship research and innovation funding programme. The health cluster aims to improve and protect the health and well-being of citizens of all ages by generating new knowledge and developing innovative solutions to prevent, diagnose, monitor, treat and cure diseases.