SMC: From adapting to COVID-19 to looking to the future at the ASTMH Annual Meeting 2021

As the global health community comes together virtually for this year’s American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) Annual Meeting, it represents a key moment of reflection for Malaria Consortium’s seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) programme. We’re looking back on almost two years of operating within the parameters of the pandemic while also looking forward into 2022 and beyond at what SMC could look like as an intervention as our latest research is integrated into practice .

Malaria Consortium set out early in the pandemic to adapt SMC delivery to ensure the intervention could be carried out safely in 2020 and reach its goal of distributing life-saving antimalarials to millions of children under 5. We produced new guidance for SMC implementers with a focus on infection prevention and control and underpinned this with a new job aid to support community distributors to follow the guidance.

While this period has been challenging for the programme, we have shared our learnings with the wider SMC community and worked with governments to embed changes to distributions. In a symposium at the ASTMH Annual Meeting, Dr Kevin Baker hosts a discussion on implementing SMC during the COVID-19 pandemic, with Abimbola Phillips presenting results from a mixed methods study in Nigeria to assess the quality of infection prevention and control measures practiced during the 2020 SMC campaign there.

Alongside the work of adaptation and the continuity of the programme, we have launched a new research strategy for SMC and advanced several other implementation and operational research projects during the past year to guide SMC implementation into the future. Results from these studies are also being presented at the ASTMH Annual Meeting.

A significant area of focus for Malaria Consortium’s SMC research is the prospect of expanding the reach of SMC to new geographies outside of the Sahel region. Two Malaria Consortium presentations will share findings from studies in Uganda and Mozambique to establish the feasibility, acceptability, and impact of the intervention in their respective areas.

The co-implementation of SMC alongside other interventions that could be beneficial to public health is also an area requiring further research. Dr Sola Oresanya has presented findings from the pilot co-implementation of vitamin A distribution alongside SMC in rural and urban settings in Nigeria.

Other presentations on SMC at the ASTMH Annual Meeting include:

• Adaptation of rapid multi-objective lot quality assurance sampling (LQAS) surveys as part of SMC programs in Burkina Faso, Chad, Nigeria and Mozambique for identifying issues and driving improvements in SMC delivery
• Role model approach to explore caregiver administration of seasonal malaria chemoprevention drugs to children under five: results from a mixed methods multi-country study in Burkina Faso, Chad and Togo
• An ecological analysis exploring the impact of seasonal malaria chemoprevention in Burkina Faso and Nigeria using national household surveys (2010–2018)

Stay up-to-date with all of Malaria Consortium’s presentations at the ASTMH Annual Meeting on our dedicated page.

Ashley Giles is External Relations Manager for SMC at Malaria Consortium