Malaria Consortium US

Diagnosing pneumonia is challenging at all levels of healthcare. Diagnosis requires counting respiratory rates and inaccurate counts can lead to incorrect diagnosis and inappropriate treatment. Through the ARIDA project, Malaria Consortium aims to introduce automated respiratory rate counting aids for use by frontline health workers in resource limited community settings and health facilities that offer improved accuracy and effectiveness compared to current practice for classifying pneumonia.

SMC is a highly effective intervention to prevent malaria in those most vulnerable to the disease’s effects. It involves administering up to four monthly doses of antimalarial drugs to children aged 3-59 months during peak malaria transmission season. SMC has been shown to be effective, cost effective and feasible for the prevention of malaria among children in areas where the malaria transmission season is no longer than four months. Since it was approved by the WHO, SMC has been found to prevent up to 89 percent of malaria cases. An estimated 28-34 million children are eligible for SMC, the vast majority of whom live in the Sahel region.
Malaria Consortium has been leading the way on SMC globally. Initially through our pilot project in northern Nigeria and later through our UNITAID funded ACCESS-SMC project. ACCESS-SMC supported the national malaria control programmes of seven Sahelian countries (Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea Conakry, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, The Gambia) to scale up their SMC coverage, with Malaria Consortium and partners providing technical, logistical and financial support for its implementation.
Malaria Consortium is supporting eligible countries to prepare to deliver SMC. This ranges from developing high level plans and policies at central level, right down to identifying the number of health workers needed in each remote village. To ensure delivery goes smoothly, we are assisting with timelines, assigning responsibilities, developing materials and ensuring all necessary stakeholders are on board – from ministers and health officials to the community health workers who administer the SMC drugs and town criers who inform communities about SMC. Additionally, Malaria Consortium supports countries with a wide range of knowledge and expertise, including supply chain management, health worker training, community mobilization and safety monitoring.

Funded by the Department for International Development (DFID)/UK aid, SuNMaP was launched in 2008 at a time when malaria was having a devastating impact upon Nigeria. The disease accounted for 60 percent of outpatient visits, placing a huge burden on the health system. Malaria was the cause of 30 percent of deaths in children under five – over 300,000 deaths every year.

Led by Malaria Consortium, in partnership with GRID Consulting and Health Partners International, the programme has contributed significantly to declining malaria rates and deaths in Nigeria. At the dissemination event delegates heard how, during its eight years of implementation, SuNMaP provided technical assistance to the Nigerian National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP) to scale up malaria control across ten states. Since 2008, SuNMaP has:
Saved the lives of 48,000 children under the age of five Distributed twelve million long-lasting insecticidal nets, contributing to the increase in coverage from 7 to 58 percent between 2008 and 2014 2.7 million malaria rapid diagnostic tests and 2.7 million antimalarial drugs (artemisinin-combination therapies – ACTs) were distributed Over 5 million ACTs were sold through the strengthened commercial sector 23,000 health workers were trained to diagnose and treat malaria in their communities.

The significant reduction of malaria morbidity and mortality in Myanmar is threatened by a number of factors. The largest of these threats is the emergence of drug resistant malaria parasites along the international border areas, including the Myanmar-Thailand and Myanmar-China borders as well as in some areas in central Myanmar.
At the time in 2015, no malaria surveys had been conducted at national scale to assess coverage of key malaria indicators. Although efforts are being made to improve the health information system in Myanmar, malaria data remain incomplete with regards to geographical coverage (past surveys did not fully capture hard-to-access areas), completeness, and coverage of high-risk groups.

To respond to this need, the National Malaria Control Programme conducted a national malaria indicator survey in 2015 with Malaria Consortium as the technical lead and funding support from the President’s Malaria Initiative, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Three Millennium Development Goal Fund (3MDG), GFATM and other partners. The results of this survey will help to prioritise malaria services more effectively to areas of greatest malaria burden and provide baseline malaria data to support future assessments of the impact of all malaria-related activities nationwide, as well as for future strategic planning.

Malaria Consortium's upSCALE Project is designed to integrate community health worker (CHW) service delivery platform into one comprehensive mobile phone application which integrated community health level indicators into Mozambique’s electronic District Health Information Software 2 (DHIS2) platform. upSCALE was originally piloted by Malaria Consortium in Inhambane and Cabo Delgado Provinces. Based on the positive impact, the Ministry of Health (MoH) approved the use of upSCALE for all CHWs in 2018 to assist with case management of common childhood and maternal illnesses. To ensure the long-term sustainability and utility of the CHW mHealth system, Malaria Consortium is working with MoH staff to drive content design, training and roll-out of the system, as well as hosting and use of the online dashboard.
The interactive upSCALE digital algorithm guides the CHW through routine health checks, diagnosis, treatment, referral and follow-up. It also provides modules for patient counselling, data management, stock out alert systems, surveillance and training. To enhance CHW motivation and performance, the upSCALE platform has a complementary tablet-based application for supervisors which enables them to improve CHWs’ performance and strengthen communication and feedback to CHWs. upSCALE’s data collection feature monitors the quality of service delivery and tracks procurement and supply of malaria and other commodities by integrating CHW level indicators into Mozambique’s electronic DHIS2 software. MoH officials receive real-time data from CHWs in a user-friendly format allowing them to ensure data-driven decision-making around investments for CHW programs, surveillance and responses to infectious diseases including malaria, and early detection of disease outbreaks.