Malaria Consortium launches rapid assessments project to help define the future of seasonal malaria chemoprevention

Malaria Consortium is conducting a new research project to carry out ‘rapid assessments’ in East and southern Africa to provide evidence on the suitability of seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) as a malaria prevention tool in geographies where it has not previously been tested.

The project, launching in a new area of Mozambique next month – and later expanding to include up to four additional countries – will involve conducting “light” versions of the research methods used in recent SMC implementation studies in Nampula province in Mozambique, Karamoja region in Uganda and Northern Bahr el Ghazal state in South Sudan. It also involves working with Imperial College in London to refine a malaria model that can provide reliable estimates of the impact of SMC in the region, which can help national malaria programmes make quick decisions about the deployment of SMC.

The new project will also take place in the context of updated guidelines on malaria, issued by the World Health Organization in July 2022, which provide flexibility to malaria-endemic countries to adapt chemoprevention strategies based on local, context-specific evidence.

The full details about the project objectives and activities can be found in a new project brief.

Dr Baltazar Candrinho, Director of Mozambique’s National Malaria Control Programme, said: “Exciting work has been done to understand the utility of SMC in Nampula province in Mozambique. This new project will provide further invaluable data to help us make quicker decisions about using SMC in other areas of Mozambique where SMC has not yet been tested.”

Malaria Consortium’s East and Southern Africa Programmes Director, Dr Godfrey Magumba said: “We’re proud to be continuing Malaria Consortium’s work to produce robust evidence on the use of SMC in East and southern Africa which we anticipate will help guide our national malaria programme partners to make decisions on future deployment. We have already completed in-depth implementation studies in Mozambique, Uganda and South Sudan with results to be shared soon. The rapid assessments will complement this work and expand the evidence base to take in other new locations, potentially benefiting many thousands of children.”

This research project takes place as a part of Malaria Consortium’s wider seasonal malaria chemoprevention programme which reached 24 million children with life-saving antimalarial medicines across Africa in 2022.

Read the full project brief

Learn more about our work on seasonal malaria chemoprevention

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