Taking malaria fight at community level

More than 35 countries in Africa are attending this year’s Malaria control programme workshop in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to acknowledge the progress made in managing malaria, particularly at the community level.Titled “Empowering Communities: The Heart of Malaria Control”, it is convened by Novartis (pharmaceutical company that manufactures Coartem, antimalarial drug used in Rwanda).This year, National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP) Best Practice Sharing Workshop focuses on empowering communities in case management of malaria. Rwanda pioneered the efforts and has integrated community health workers into their public health systems, according to Dr Corine Karema, the Head of the Malaria and Other Parasitic Diseases Division at the Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC).She explained that Community health workers (CHWs) are treating children under five with malaria and Rwanda is the pioneer and leader in Africa of having CHWs testing fever with Rapid diagnostic test and treating malaria.“As a result, today 95% of malaria cases in Rwanda are laboratory confirmed and 93% of children under five with malaria are treated within 24 hours of symptom onset and receive correct treatment,” Dr Karema said in an email.The meeting brings together national and international malaria leaders also to discuss key topics and challenges.One of the challenges is sustaining funding and harmonisation of malaria control activities, Dr Karema noted, but expressed hope that domestic funds for malaria will increase with their sustainability plan.Dr Karema stressed the need to strengthen the supply chain and control entry of antimalaria drugs for its quality control.She also called for a forum at region level to discuss malaria control with comprehensive package of all malaria control interventions mainly long lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs) use, insecticide and drugs.A statement said the objective of the workshop was to exchange lessons learnt from different models of community case management of malaria among countries and to determine how the gains that had been made could be sustained in the current economic climate.“We are delighted to launch the 11th NMCP workshop that will address key topics based on the needs of our malaria partners,” said Thomas Teuscher, Interim Executive Director, Roll Back Malaria, hosted by the World Health Organisation (WHO).“It’s imperative that we listen to the key challenges for all those active in the fight against malaria to ensure that we deliver outputs from the workshop that provide benefits to all the countries and organisations involved .”In Rwanda, the recent scaling up of interventions has made significant reductions in morbidity by 87% from 1,669,614 malaria cases in 2005 to 212,200 cases in 2011 and reduced mortality by 76% from 1,582 death in 2005 to 380 death in 2011. This reduction is attributed to scaling up of preventive measures, especially coverage and use of long lasting insecticidal nets. According to the 2010 DHS results, 82% of the population have at least one LLIN and 72% of pregnant women and 70% of children under-five years were using bed nets. One of the core sessions of the Ethiopia workshop will focus on the evolving malaria funding landscape.The statement said at a time of global economic uncertainty, partners were calling for malaria to continue to be a priority so that the unprecedented but fragile gains that had been made could be sustained and expanded.“While it is important that development aid continues to be provided for national malaria control programmes, it is also crucial that African countries increase domestic spending on malaria to ensure we achieve our ambitious target of near zero malaria deaths by 2015,” said Dr. Melanie Renshaw, African Leaders Malaria Alliance.Other topics that will be discussed during the workshop include the evolution of the SMS for Life programme (which uses text messages to improve the quality of malaria management by accurately reporting stock levels of anti-malarial and other products) and safeguarding the future of African children by delivering child-friendly anti-malarial formulations.Since the first pioneering workshop in 2006, NMCP Best Practice Sharing Workshops have been held in South Africa, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Mali, Rwanda, Zambia and Benin. Usually the meeting draws participants from malaria endemic countries all over Africa and several other key stakeholders from NGOs, Academia multilateral organisations including WHO, Roll Back Malaria Partnership (RBM) among others.