Malaria Consortium is presenting four posters on one project at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene annual meeting in Maryland this year. So what is the project, and what information will we be sharing?
The project
The Malaria Action Program for Districts is a five-year, USAID-funded programme implemented by Malaria Consortium in partnership with Jhpiego, Banyan Global, Communication for Development Foundation Uganda (CDFU), Deloitte Uganda and Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI).
The project covers 49 districts in Central, Mid-Western and West Nile regions of Uganda, with an estimated population of 13 million people. The goal of the project is to improve the health status of the Ugandan population by reducing childhood and maternal morbidity and mortality due to malaria.
The project team works with all levels of the Ugandan health system, leveraging project partnership expertise and experience in the cross-cutting areas of innovative and sustainable capacity development, social behaviour change communication, inclusion of gender and youth consideration across project activities, and improved quality control, monitoring, evaluation and learning mechanisms.
So what have we learnt so far?
Our posters at ASTMH
Four MAPD senior staff members will be presenting their posters. First up will be Dr Daniella Migisha, regional coordinator for Masaka. She is presenting on malaria morbidity and mortality trends in central Uganda. Her main argument is that alongside the distribution of long-lasting insecticidal nets we need to ensure that health workers are trained in data collection and reporting. Improving surveillance of interventions and their effectiveness is crucial for reducing malaria morbidity and mortality.
Meet Dr Migisha and see her poster on Friday 22 November from noon to 1.45pm at poster session B. It will also be available here.
The second poster will be presented by Ruth Kigozi, our M&E and Knowledge Management Specialist. She will be sharing information gathered in Uganda on the determinants of malaria testing at health facilities. Her poster shows that when commodities are available, support supervision and training of health workers in how to use rapid diagnostic tests still plays a positive role in malaria service delivery. Malaria diagnostic testing is also not adversely affected by laboratory infrastructure (for example power supply unreliability or the lack of disinfectant) at the facility.
Meet Ruth Kigozi and see her poster on Friday 22 November from noon to 1.45pm at poster session B. It will also be available here.
The third MAPD poster, which is on show at the same time as the two above, will be presented by Patrick Bukoma, one of our Malaria Specialists based in Kampala. Patrick will share lessons learnt from an audit of severe malaria deaths conducted in health facilities in Uganda. Among other things, his poster will explain how crucial it is that we strengthen health systems and health worker practices in order to reduce mortality attributable to severe malaria.
Meet Patrick Bukoma and see his poster on Friday 22 November from noon to 1.45pm at poster session B. It will also be available here.
The final MAPD poster will be presented by Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist John Baptist Bwanika, and he will be talking about the successes that MAPD has had improving universal coverage of long-lasting insecticidal nets by distributing them at schools in Uganda. The team has found that this can help maintain high household coverage of mosquito nets – especially in those headed by women, or by someone with a high level of education or wealth.
Meet John Baptist Bwanika and see his poster on Saturday 23 November from noon to 1.45pm at poster session C. It will also be available here.
You can access all of our live ASTMH information on our dedicated page here