Partners and their Roles





The Partners and their Roles

 

World Health Organization (WHO)
The Containment Project was unique, led by WHO Headquarters and WHO Regional Offices for the Western Pacific and for Southeast Asia in close collaboration with National Malaria Centre (CNM) Cambodia, the Bureau of Vector-Borne Disease (BVBD) Thailand, Malaria Consortium and the Wellcome Trust/Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Research Unit, Pasteur Institute Cambodia, and the Centre of Excellence for Biomedical and Public Health Informatics (BIOPHICS), Faculty of Tropical Medicine (FTM), and the Mahidol University. The project was a collaborative effort of agencies with the range of key skills and capacity to mount the necessary response at global, inter-regional, regional and country levels. WHO was the overall responsible for the implementation and research components of the project. The WHO launched a website dedicated to the containment project, which includes comprehensive information on the initiative including background information and achievements as well as pictures from the field. Click
here to visit the website.

National Malaria Centre, Ministry of Health (MoH) Cambodia
Established in 1984, the National Center for Parasitology, Entomology and Malaria Control (CNM) was responsible for all technical and financial aspects related to nationwide planning, co-ordination, training and reference laboratory services related to malaria, dengue, schistosomiasis, helminthiasis, and filariasis. It supported the implementation of national strategies through a network of provincial malaria supervisors, operational district and health facilities staff. With more than 90 employees, CNM is one of the largest national programmes in Cambodia, and led national efforts supporting implementation by provincial, district and community services including planning for and distribution of long-lasting insecticidal nets and long-lasting insecticide treated hammock nets, recruitment and training of mobile malaria workers and other health staff to provide prompt detection and treatment, implementation of a comprehensive package of behaviour change and communications interventions and monitoring and evaluation.

Bureau of Vector-Borne Disease, Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) Thailand
The Bureau of Vector-Borne Disease (BVBD) within the Department of Disease Control in the MoPH was responsible for malaria-related research, generating policy for malaria control, and evaluating the programme. Throughout the country there were 39 Vector Borne Disease Centres at the provincial level and 302 Vector-Borne Disease Units at the district level that were responsible for the prevention and control of malaria as well as other vector-borne diseases. In the Containment Project, the Bureau was working to ensure adequate coverage of long lasting insecticidal nets and long lasting insecticidal hammock nets, piloting an improved surveillance system using geographic information systems (GIS) and mapping, and spear-heading a situational analysis on migratory patterns of mobile and migrant populations.

Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Research Unit (MORU), Thailand
The basic research component of the Containment Project was coordinated by WHO and MORU, a department of the Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University. This unit has a long history of clinical research on malaria, particularly on antimalarial drugs and resistance, and has developed research networks on malaria and other infectious diseases within the region. Its laboratory studies and mathematical modelling followed the work of an earlier programme supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, known as the Artemisinin Resistance Confirmation, Characterization and Containment (ARC3) programme.

Institut Pasteur Cambodia (IPC)
Institut Pasteur has had a presence in Cambodia since 1995. It has both a public health service function and undertakes research and training in a wide-range of tropical disease including malaria, HIV/AIDS, and arboviruses. Through Global Fund support, the molecular epidemiology unit jointly with CNM has established a national molecular laboratory. IPC continued to provide laboratory support in molecular analysis for the containment project, particularly on high-throughput methods for malaria detection using PCR.

The Centre of Excellence for Biomedical and Public Health Informatics (BIOPHICS), Faculty of Tropical Medicine (FTM), Mahidol University, Thailand
BIOPHICS has over 10 years of experience in managing clinical trials, observational studies, surveillance system development, database/software development and capacity building. BIOPHICS provides a wide range of development, management and consulting services to pharmaceutical industries, biotechnology, academic institutions and public health organizations and aims to bridge and network with other existing centres for knowledge-based and health informatics for global health outcomes. The Geographic Information Unit (GIU) of the FTM, Mahidol University developed an innovative health information module in Thailand with disease mapping using modern communications technologies to achieve the levels of detailed and rapid information management and surveillance needed by the project.

Malaria Consortium
Malaria Consortium is based at the Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University in Thailand and in Phnom Penh and Pailin in Cambodia. It has supported the design, implementation and analysis of large scale malaria surveys in Cambodia (2004 and 2007), contributed to the development of the Asian Collaborative Training Network for Malaria for regional training, and is a partner for monitoring, evaluation, surveillance and operational research in the USAID-supported WHO Mekong Malaria Programme (MMP). Malaria Consortium, with established activities in monitoring and evaluation, operations research and training in the region, supported the Containment Project by providing technical staff and technical assistance for rigorous monitoring and evaluation and gathering the evidence base required to improve the strategy and response.

The organization was in charge of overall monitoring and evaluation of the project, supporting both Cambodia and Thailand in their data collection and analysis, and provided technical support in developing and implementing procedures to assess Village Malaria Worker performance in the containment areas. It also provided technical support for the development of a Focal Screening and Treatment pilot in Cambodia, reaching mobile populations in both countries through the innovative method of Day 3 SMS reporting system for malaria cases.

Efforts to contain artemisinin resistance continue through the successful Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria grants to Cambodia (Round 9) and Thailand (Round 10) – both of which Malaria Consortium helped to develop. Malaria Consortium is also engaged in supporting the surveys for the Myanmar Artemisinin Resistance Containment (MARC) strategy.

Malaria Consortium
Strategy 2021-2025

Read it here