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Malaria Day, April 25, 2008: “Malaria: a disease without borders”

The Rollback Malaria Partnership (RBM) has designated April 25th as the annual day for organizations worldwide to reaffirm a commitment to rolling back malaria in Africa and throughout the world.

Malaria places a tremendous burden on lives and economies in endemic countries and calls for urgent world action. More than 300 million cases of malaria each year result in over one million deaths, with over 90% of these deaths occurring in Africa, mostly among young children. Malaria remains the leading cause of mortality in many African countries, disproportionately affecting young children and pregnant women.

New funding and technologies are making it possible to more ffectively combat the disease and expanding opportunities to move forward to free Africa and endemic countries from malaria. This year’s slogan “Malaria: a disease without borders” is intended to mobilize communities across the world to become involved in the battle to end the epidemic. It calls upon partners to collaborate efficiently on community, local, national, regional and international levels. 

In line with the priorities of the President’s Malaria Initiative, The USAID Health Care Improvement Project (HCI), formerly the Quality Assurance Project (QAP), supports quality improvement activities and research in Africa aimed at expanding preventive therapy for pregnant women and use of insecticide-treated bednets, encouraging appropriate care-seeking behavior, strengthening malaria diagnosis and case management, improving the prompt use of artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACT), and increasing adherence to treatment.

In Niger and Tanzania, HCI supports Pediatric Hospital Improvement (PHI) Collaboratives that are strengthening the quality of malaria diagnosis and case management for children under five treated at the district hospital level, particularly for life-threatening severe malaria and its complications. Ongoing operations research is assessing the impact of the Niger PHI Collaborative for improving child malaria diagnosis and care in district hospitals.

As part of antenatal programs, Essential Obstetric and Neonatal Care (EONC) Collaboratives supported by HCI in Benin and Niger target improved prevention of malaria in expectant mothers, applying intermittent preventive therapy (IPT) and improved treatment of malaria for expectant mothers and their unborn babies who are at risk. In addition to promoting prevention and prompt ACT, the collaboratives also promote access to and distribution of insecticide-treated nets (ITNs).

In Zambia, HCI is working with the National Malaria Control Center and WHO to develop and field test simplified instructions for malaria rapid diagnostic tests (RDT)  aimed at low-literacy community health workers.  Follow-on research is addressing critical operational issues raised by widespread RDT use in Africa, including safe blood handling practices, appropriate disposal of medical waste (including sharps), proper storage and handling of the test kits prior to use, decision-making by community health workers about when to treat based on test results and when to treat presumptively, and what workers should tell patients who are febrile but RDT‑negative.

For more information on HCI efforts to reduce maternal and child morbidity and mortality from malaria, contact Dr. Kathleen Hill at khill@urc-chs.com. For more information on our malaria field research, contact Dr. Steve Harvey at sharvey@urc-chs.com.

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