|
 |
|
|
World Malaria Day: Renewing our commitment
Dr. Kent Campbell, MACEPA program director |
|
|
|
On this first World Malaria Day, MACEPA joins with our partners to reaffirm our commitment to eliminating
malaria’s toll on the world’s most vulnerable people. While the commitment is global, MACEPA’s partnership investments focus on
Africa, building on early successes and charting the pathway to sustainable programming. Progress in Africa, where the most substantial challenges are
posed, will build confidence that investments in malaria control will translate into sustaining health and economic improvement.
The malaria community has much to celebrate. Pace-setting countries, including MACEPA’s partners Ethiopia and Zambia, have achieved substantial early impact on rates
of malaria death and sickness. These countries are sharing their experiences and expertise with their peers across Africa, and momentum is building
for a regional breakthrough. Global attention and funding for malaria control in Africa have reached an all-time high, accompanied by new levels of
partner coordination and confidence in African leadership to fight the disease. As a result, national and global leaders are expressing new
levels of ambition as they consider the long-term prospects for malaria control.
Stopping malaria in Africa will require intensified commitment, cooperation, and, perhaps most critically, national
expertise in malaria control programming. Building a regional movement from these early national successes will require a framework that can be
adapted to countries whose leaders are less committed or are facing war, extreme poverty, and social instability. The MACEPA Learning Community, with Roll Back
Malaria partners, is focusing on strengthening sub-regional capacity for programming development and innovative country-to-country learning, and
working with African leaders and communities as they assess their aspirations for approaching malaria control on a truly regional
basis. |
|
|
A global pledge to stop a disease without
borders
Professor Awa Marie
Coll-Seck, executive director, Roll Back Malaria Partnership |
World Malaria Day is a reminder to the global health community that malaria is not a national or regional issue,
but a global public health problem that can only be addressed with collaboration across borders, regions, and continents. It also gives us an occasion
to reflect on the progress we have seen in a number of malaria-endemic countries over the last few years, largely due to increased coordination among
Roll Back Malaria partners. We are seeing real benefits from the increase in coverage with insecticide-treated nets delivered through integrated
nationwide campaigns, a dramatic decrease in deaths in areas with improved net coverage, increasing use of indoor spraying, and a doubling of the
approval rate for Global Fund grants to fight malaria.
The countdown to the 2010 internationally agreed targets has begun, and the malaria community has committed to
new initiatives that will help us to build upon these gains. The recently established Affordable Medicines Facility-malaria will subsidize
artemisinin-based combination therapy, making the best drugs much more accessible to those who need them. A cohesive Global Malaria Business Plan will
articulate the short-, medium-, and long-term needs to fight malaria and succeed.
Today, the world must renew its commitment to win this fight. It must focus its attention on achieving the
achievable—saving lives—and at the same time strengthening health systems and reducing poverty. By acting as an efficient, coordinated
partnership, we can roll back malaria and do so much more. |
|
|
Zambia's national and regional perspective
Dr. Victor Mukonka, director of public health and research, Zambia
Ministry of Health |
Photo: Anne Jennings
Festivities in Lusaka, April 23, 2008. |
There is a festive mood in Zambia today, as we reflect on how far we have come in fighting malaria. Three years ago we set our national targets for malaria
control at the highest level endorsed by the global community, and many believed that we were aiming too high. This year, however, Zambia and its
partners will be able to demonstrate that great progress is being made—national targets for high coverage with preventive medicines for
pregnant women, insecticide-treated mosquito nets, and indoor residual spraying with insecticides are being met in 2008.
The theme of this year’s World Malaria Day, “a disease without borders,” has special significance
in Zambia, which has eight contiguous neighbors. Zambia’s Minister of Health, the Honorable Dr. Brian Chituwo, is the chairman of the Southern
African Development Community’s Ministers of Health. The Ministers have developed a regional strategy to eliminate malaria from their countries
by 2015, and have just finished meeting in Livingstone, Zambia to coordinate their approaches. Zambia is sharing the lessons, tools, and methods of
our scale-up endeavor with other countries through the MACEPA Learning Community, and coordinating with our neighbors to create a trans-Zambezi
malaria control program that will benefit the SADC countries.
Zambia has the opportunity to consider even more ambitious goals for controlling malaria and to invest in sustaining the
accomplishments to date. To eliminate malaria, we will need to continue support for the fight in the difficult-to-reach places when it may seem
to some that it has already been won. It will be critical to maintain political and financial support when our hospital beds are mostly empty of
malaria patients and there are few if any positive test slides in our clinics.
Zambia is committed to continuing to provide critical leadership against malaria by protecting its own people and by
joining in cooperation with our country’s neighbors to halt this borderless disease. |
|
|
An update
on the scale-up for impact approach to malaria control
Dr. Rick Steketee, MACEPA science director |
Cycle for optimizing program performance. |
Scale-up for
impact, an approach to malaria control endorsed by the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership, is grounded in the understanding that rapidly
increasing coverage of proven interventions—insecticide-treated mosquito nets (ITNs), indoor residual spraying with insecticides, and medicines
to prevent and treat the disease—can quickly result in substantive health and economic benefit. Dramatic impact on illness, infection, and
severe anemia is already being seen in early-adopter African countries, and some—including Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Zambia—are reporting
fewer malaria deaths and improved child survival. There is consensus in the global malaria community that scaling up for impact, with a focus on
strengthening national health systems, is the way forward for sustainable programming.
The deployment of the scale-up for impact approach in many country settings has brought about an important
understanding regarding the fundamental elements required for success. The approach requires national commitment to leadership, along with proven and
adaptable tools for implementation and management. All partners must be committed to the three ones – working from one national plan,
with one coordinating body, and one system for monitoring and evaluation. And central to effectiveness is the core programming methodology of an
iterative, robust cycle of planning, resourcing, implementing, and monitoring and evaluating– indeed, the standard public health programming
cycle (see figure above).
As Africa’s aspirations for controlling malaria continue to evolve, with more countries rapidly scaling up
intervention coverage, the next steps of sustained control transitioning to elimination have emerged. The scale-up for impact approach pushes an
aggressive timeframe, invoking programming strategies that some fear may not be consistent with sustained control or elimination, such as
campaign-style delivery of long-lasting ITNs. However, as we have learned from the early adopters, national leadership, the commitment to the three
ones, and the programming cycle pave the way for continuing progress. Indeed, these will provide a robust framework for existing and new interventions
and service delivery methods as countries transition to sustained control and elimination.
MACEPA is now working with the many RBM partners to develop and assemble the tools needed for each part of the
programming cycle, establishing a regionally acknowledged gold standard for building and managing malaria control programs, based on countries’
experiences with scale-up. And through its Learning
Community, MACEPA is engaging countries that are making progress in scale-up to define evidence-based, practical approaches to consolidating and
maintaining progress. We are supporting partnerships for collaborative learning, bringing countries together to share lessons and test and validate
core tools and methods. MACEPA continues working with partners at all levels to build and maintain political and financing commitments necessary
for scale-up and sustained impact on malaria in Africa—where elimination efforts must by necessity begin and end. |
|
|
|
|
To learn about and apply for jobs with MACEPA and other PATH programs, please visit PATH's
career website. |
|
|
|
| We respect the privacy of our online relationships. PATH lists are never sold to third parties. We will only share personally identifiable information with third parties when the person submitting the information authorizes us to share it or we are required to by law. |
|
|
|
|
