Surveillance
Strengthened surveillance, monitoring and evaluation enable health systems to tailor and target interventions effectively and strategically and sustain progress in reducing disease. Ongoing surveillance tracks disease incidence and outbreaks, providing valuable data and fostering responsive and timely feedback loops on how health resources and facilities are used. This real-time information is critical for evaluating interventions, guiding improvements and enabling adaptive management.
We work with national governments to improve the quality and accessibility of routine health information. By deploying digital tools, strengthening supervision and improving data quality audits, we ensure reliable data flows from health facilities and communities to national health information systems. Our leadership in three core areas — quality improvement, technical guidance and capacity strengthening — drives effective and responsive surveillance systems.
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Data quality
High-quality surveillance data are essential to inform programmatic decision-making accurately. However, some low- and middle-income countries continue to face complex and under-resourced healthcare systems covering large and remote geographic regions, which presents challenges to improving data quality and use.
We strengthen data quality by designing, implementing and assessing surveillance and M&E tools, developing surveillance capacity among programme and health staff, bolstering supportive supervision practices, and harnessing the power of digital data entry, reporting and visualisation tools.
In practice: In Mozambique, our surveillance strengthening project successfully improved data quality and embedded a culture of translating data into action, through emphasis on data quality assurance activities. Health staff now increasingly use dashboards for decision-making and review outbreak investigation and response procedures, enhancing their capacity to analyse and act on data.
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Sustainability
Routine surveillance is an effective tool for monitoring changes in malaria epidemiology, identifying outbreaks and targeting interventions. Despite this, routine surveillance data remain underused in many high-transmission countries due to challenges in data quality and lack of ownership. Enhancing the use of routine malaria data at local levels — integrating a localised approach into the existing health system — can ensure sustainability in the long term.
In practice: Building on ground-breaking surveillance work in Mozambique, we are developing a data quality assurance and decision-making model in Mozambique and Uganda. This work will provide crucial insights into how governments and non-governmental organisations can work together to ensure stewardship and sustainability of interventions.
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Molecular surveillance
Molecular surveillance is essential for tackling the growing threat of drug and insecticide resistance. By identifying genetic markers of resistance early, it enables timely, targeted responses — from changing treatment policies to adjusting vector control strategies — helping preserve the effectiveness of malaria interventions. Molecular data strengthens routine surveillance, informs adaptive strategies and ensures interventions continue to protect at-risk populations.
In practice: In South Sudan and Uganda, we are closely monitoring malaria in refugee communities using advanced molecular tools. By collecting detailed data on mosquitoes and their parasites, and how malaria spreads, we aim to track changes in drug and diagnostic resistance across eastern Africa over time and in different locations.
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Quality improvement
High-quality care is critical to delivering positive health outcomes for patients. Our quality improvement work focuses on enhancing health worker performance and removing barriers to guideline adherence. Through targeted training, we strengthen health workers’ capacity to accurately diagnose common diseases and ensure patients receive the right tests and treatments.
We also work closely with regulatory authorities to establish robust quality assurance systems. This ensures that diagnostic tests are of the highest quality and that the distribution of medicines and supplies is reliable and efficient.
In practice: In Nigeria, we are strengthening how severe forms of malaria are diagnosed and managed. Through health worker training, we have improved the accuracy of malaria diagnosis and the quality of case management. Using the evidence generated, we are supporting the Kano State Malaria Elimination Programme to define a pathway to scale for continuous quality improvement.
Find out how we use research to strengthen local capacity and services.
Saidat Usman
Nurse and malaria champion for change, Kano state, Nigeria
Since the introduction of the Severe Malaria project in Nigeria, there has been a remarkable improvement in malaria diagnosis, treatment and overall case management.