DISEASES WE TACKLE

• Malaria is an infectious disease that, despite being preventable and treatable, threatens the lives of 3.2 billion people around the world. Since 2003, we have been working in partnership with communities, government and non-government organisations in Africa and Asia towards eliminating malaria, providing technical and operational support to strengthen health systems.

• Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) primarily occur in rural and poor urban areas of low-income and middle-income countries. Some of the more well-known NTDs include trachoma, lymphatic filariasis, leprosy, schistosomiasis and dengue. We have been working on NTD control in a number of African countries since 2005, conducting situational analyses and reviewing possible interventions for NTD control in South Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda and Mozambique.

• Dengue is a tropical disease (caused by a virus with four separate serotypes) which is transmitted by the bite of an infected mosquito. The vast majority of cases are found in the Asia Pacific region, but Aedes mosquitoes, which transmit dengue, have expanded into areas including Australia, the United States, southern Europe and Africa. We have been working in Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand, implementing these preventive strategies as well as using innovative vector control programmes to combat the rise of dengue fever.

• Pneumonia — a preventable, treatable and curable disease — remains the leading infectious cause of death among children under five. Malaria Consortium has been at the forefront of pneumonia implementation research over the past 10 years. Our country offices are supporting ministries of health across Africa and Asia to develop national pneumonia action plans that will strengthen their health system’s pneumonia responses.

• Diarrhoeal diseases are a leading killer of children under five, causing over half a million child deaths each year worldwide. They are caused by drinking or eating contaminated water or food or as a result of poor hygiene and sanitation practices. We incorporate building skills and support for community level health workers into our programmes to be able to recognise, diagnose, treat and refer children under five suffering diarrhoea and other common childhood illnesses.

• It is estimated that over a third of child deaths are due directly or indirectly to undernutrition. We have pioneered work on iCCM, supporting the integrated treatment of common childhood illnesses including malnutrition at the community level. iCCM involves training voluntary CHWs to diagnose and treat under-fives for these illnesses and to refer cases of severe acute malnutrition (SAM) and complicated illness to health facilities.