More than 150 regional participants in the fight against Malaria are meeting in Kigali to review and plan for measures on strengthening Malaria surveillance in high and low burden countries, review progress and plan for 2011-2015.

The week-long meeting themed: "Robust Malaria surveillance systems towards malaria pre-elimination and assessing Roadmaps achievements” is jointly organized by the Ministry of Health (MoH), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Roll Back Malaria Partnership (RBM), a global framework for coordinated action against Malaria.

"At the end of today’s session, we shall have introduced the tools for surveillance on how to monitor achievements from the countries in terms of the disease’s surveillance,” Dr. Peter Mbabazi, the Coordinator of the East Africa Roll Back Malaria Network (EARN), told The New Times.

EARN is a regional network founded in 2002, that coordinates partner support on technical and operational issues for effective Malaria control interventions to 11 East African countries was also involved.

Mbabazi said the meeting will provide a forum for countries and RBM partners to review achievements relating to Malaria control over the past year as well as plan for the following year.

The 11th EARN session will also help in sharing experiences and best practices, and to discuss cross-cutting challenges towards improved program performance to reach RBM and MDG targets.

The Ministry of Health has previously noted that Rwanda is on the right track to achieve the MDGs related to Malaria. Since 2008, Malaria control interventions have been scaled up.

Dr. Corine Karema, the Director of the Malaria unit in TRAC Plus, is quoted as saying that the use of Long Lasting Insecticidal Nets (LLIN) in Rwanda has played a big role in reducing Malaria in the last two years.

She says that in 2010, a 50 percent decline of cases and deaths was has registered, just two months after a massive distribution of LLINs in April 2010.

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