This week, Malaria Consortium is presenting at the 64th annual meeting of American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene (ASTMH) in Philadelphia. Our symposiums and interactive presentations will cover a number of topics ranging from community health delivery and pneumonia diagnosis to the acceptability of insecticide treated clothing for malaria.
The first Malaria Consortium symposium, taking place today, focuses on distribution of seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) across the Sahel through our UNITAID-funded ACCESS-SMC project. As the first year’s distribution of treatments draws to a close, lessons have emerged that provide valuable insights for future efforts. Discussions focus on community perspectives and drivers of SMC uptake, as well as challenges and progress to date from the project’s implementation.
The second symposium explores issues of community health by highlighting two innovations from the inSCALE project in Mozambique and Uganda that increase community health worker motivation and performance in the context of integrated community case management. The first innovation consists of the use of mobile phones (mHealth), which allow community health workers to submit data and keep in touch with peers and supervisors while carrying out their work. The second involves ‘village health clubs’, which are organised by community leaders to get the community talking about and responding to crucial child health issues.
Lastly, a side meeting will bring together stakeholders to discuss Malaria Consortium’s Pneumonia Diagnostics project, a large-scale evaluation of pneumonia diagnostic tools in sub-Saharan African and Southeast Asia that aims to identify the best tools for the detection of pneumonia.
Malaria Consortium is also hosting poster presentations throughout the conference, highlighting project progress and findings. Topics include:
Private sector providers and rapid diagnostic tests for malaria Transportation and referral for cases of severe malaria Acceptability of insecticide-treated clothing in Myanmar Management of negative rapid diagnostic test results for malaria Treatments for severe malaria at different levels of care during referral process Acceptability of devices for diagnosing pneumoniaTo find out when and where Malaria Consortium staff will be presenting during the conference, see the full schedule here.