The range of responses we employ to address key diseases are designed to be the most effective, relevant and culturally and context appropriate at reaching those most in need. In partnership with communities and public and private health sector providers, we ensure our activities lead to sustainable and improved access to quality healthcare.
We seek to improve the management of disease and illness through community-based healthcare delivery. We work closely with health structures to strengthen referral systems from community to facility level for priority cases. The integrated community case management (iCCM) approach is a proven effective intervention. This involves training and building support for community-level health workers to be able to recognise, diagnose and treat common diseases, such as malaria, in members of the community –especially children under five – and refer them to health facilities for further treatment where necessary. We also train local health workers to strengthen case management processes and ensure correct treatments are given.
Chemoprevention involves the use of drugs to prevent the occurrence of illness. For malaria, we focus on chemoprevention strategies most appropriate for the settings in the countries where we work. These strategies include: seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) – administering monthly doses of antimalarials to children under five in the Sahel during peak malaria transmission season; perennial malaria chemoprevention (PMC); and intermittent preventive treatment in pregnancy (IPTp). Other diseases can also sometimes be prevented through mass drug administration (MDA), which is the administration of drugs to entire populations.
More than half of the millions of deaths in children under five every year are caused by preventable, treatable conditions. The main causes are malaria, pneumonia, diarrhoea and neonatal conditions – and nearly half are linked to malnutrition. We actively seek opportunities to integrate maternal and neonatal care services into our work, particularly through our roll out of community based health care and case management Our child and maternal health activities also focus on supporting health ministries in the development of policy and implementation of maternal and child health strategy, providing training, strengthening capacity of health officials, and undertaking research on malaria in pregnancy.
Community-based primary healthcare (CBPHC) involves using community health workers (CHWs) to deliver health services to under-served communities in remote areas. CHWs are provided with training, tools and medicines to provide basic healthcare and refer patients in hard-to-reach areas. We involve as many members of each community as possible to help improve the health of their own communities. Our CBPHC programmes are therefore tailored to fit the context and meet specific needs of communities. Our quality research at the community-level helps to measure effectiveness and ensure the sustainability, cost-effectiveness and quality of community-based health interventions.
Our Community-Based Primary Healthcare Advocacy Report outlines the ways in which this approach can make universal health coverage a reality. Learn more
Many of the countries we work in have limited resources, making it especially important that our efforts have big impact at low cost. We provide sound evidence of the economic benefits the projects and initiatives we implement by including costing elements in our programmes and in our technical support. We work closely with governments and other partners to think through the economic gains and costs of various interventions – establishing the most effective options that also provide best value for money. As part of our advocacy efforts, we also work with governments and key stakeholders to ensure that funding for critical health issues remains high.
In Nigeria, we are studying the epidemiological and entomological impacts and outcomes of mass distribution campaigns of insecticide-treated nets and will use the findings to improve vector-control decisions based on a deeper understanding of the intervention’s cost-effectiveness. Learn more
Along with governments and global health organisations the world over, Malaria Consortium is committed to fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, while safely delivering as many as possible of the essential interventions against other infectious diseases impacting the communities we serve. We fully support the World Health Organization’s declaration that interventions to prevent and control common communicable diseases should be defined as core services that must not be interrupted. This has remained the case for our seasonal malaria chemoprevention programme and the delivery of life-saving health services at the community level, through integrated community case management (iCCM), crucial to avoid increases in deaths from other diseases such as malaria.
We are also working to better understand the clinical interactions between, and impact of, COVID-19 and malaria, undertaking research in Ethiopia and Uganda to determine the burden of malaria and long-term complications following SARS-CoV-2 infection. Learn more
We work to ensure that patients are assessed accurately and provided with appropriate diagnostic tools by trained health workers at the point-of-care stage. We train health workers to develop their capacity to differentiate between common diseases and work closely with regulatory authorities to establish mechanisms for quality assurance, which ensures that all types of tests used are of the highest quality. For malaria case management, we provide support for the two main routine diagnostic methods: microscopy and malaria rapid diagnostic tests (mRDTs). We also investigate diagnostic methods including polymerase chain reaction (PCR), loop mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) and non-invasive techniques.
Malaria Consortium is a member of The Digital Diagnostics for Africa Network, funded by the UKRI Global Challenge Research Challenge Fund, the Network is an international and interdisciplinary community of experts seeking to develop innovative digital diagnostics approaches to revolutionise diagnosis of diseases, particularly effecting children across Africa. Learn more
Digital health is vital to the sustainable attainment of universal health coverage. We seek opportunities to make effective use of digital tools and approaches that improve data access and quality, enhance skills development and support surveillance and outbreak response. By combining capacity development at the community level with the use of innovative tools and platforms, we can capture high-quality, timely and accurate data and target interventions to where they are most needed and bring affordable, quality health services to those living in hard-to-reach areas.
Visit our Data-Informed Decision-Making and Digital Approaches page
Our engagement in the elimination of malaria is driven by three major objectives: to push for Plasmodium falciparum elimination in areas of artemisinin resistance; to establish better surveillance systems and capacity to provide information needed to eliminate malaria in all countries; and to advocate for continued high quality, intense and targeted efforts against malaria, even when the burden declines. We support the global malaria strategy on achieving global malaria eradication which entails working in all malaria-endemic areas, due to the possibility that malaria could become re-established. We are looking at how practical elimination in Asia and parts of Africa can be achieved and supporting countries to work towards achieving World Health Organization elimination certification.
The private sector is crucial to the delivery of good quality, accessible healthcare – the local pharmacist or drug vendor is often the first port of call for health concerns and in countries like Nigeria, over 50 percent of health services are provided in the private sector. We work with stakeholders across the chain of supply and delivery to enhance sales and procurement of health products through private outlets. We have engaged with private sector health providers to increase demand for quality assured malaria rapid diagnostic tests (mRDT) and artemisinin combination therapies and delivered training on case management and rapid diagnostic test procedures, waste management and supervision, and support the sale of commodities at affordable prices.
We supported Nigeria’s National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP) to investigate the availability of mRDTs and Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) in Nigeria under special private sector subsidy schemes which aimed to address financial barriers to the accessibility of malaria treatment. Learn more
We view the quality of care provided by any given health system as a key aspect of its overall effectiveness to deliver positive health outcomes for patients. Our quality improvement activities focus on improving health worker performance and overcoming barriers to adherence to guidelines. This includes certification programmes for malaria microscopy, clinical mentoring, improving clinical standards and evidence-based guidelines, conducting clinical audits, encouraging patient and community engagement, and implementing performance-based incentives. We develop tools and guides to support decision making and focus on ensuring that the delivery of drugs, supplies and commodities is efficient and adequate.
In Ethiopia, we are implementing a project to establish integrated primary healthcare delivery at the community level and 15 health facilities to address access and quality-of-care issues. Learn more
Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACT) remain the most effective drugs to fight malaria, but resistance has emerged in parts of Southeast Asia. Limiting the spread of antimalarial drug resistance in the region – and the development of resistance in other parts of Asia, Africa and beyond – is a global health priority. We support the continuous monitoring of drug resistance in malaria-endemic countries, along with research into the various contributing factors. We are also focused on strengthening monitoring, evaluation and surveillance systems to support efforts to control emerging resistance to widely used malaria and antibiotic treatments – particularly among vulnerable and hard-to-reach populations.
Contributing to efforts to tackle antimicrobial resistance in Bangladesh and Nepal, we’re working with project partners to implement and evaluate a community engagement intervention. Learn more
Since 2003, we have been pioneering best practices and setting standards for innovative social behaviour change (SBC) approaches, influencing policy at national and international levels. We implement evidence-based malaria SBC activities to promote community engagement, combat targeted diseases, improve public health outcomes and promote universal health coverage across Africa and Asia. We work closely with national malaria programmes and agencies, public health programmes and the private sector, providing technical support to develop evidence-informed behaviour change strategies and approaches. Embedding research within Ministry of Health structures, alongside frequent engagement with stakeholders, is critical to influencing policy and practice.
The goal of gathering disease intelligence is to empower decision-makers to lead and manage their programmes in the most effective way by providing timely, useful health-related data through surveillance, monitoring and evaluation (SME) systems. Weak disease SME systems result in governments lacking up-to-date, quality data to inform and guide the targeting of the most appropriate public health interventions. Our approach to gathering evidence for decision-making consists of combining core health-related data – together with high quality information from monitoring and surveillance systems – through a robust (impact) evaluation platform. We ensure the quality and effectiveness of SME activities through leadership and guidance in the following functional areas: quality assurance, technical support, and capacity development.
Limiting the ability of mosquitoes or other insects to spread disease is one of the core strategies to controlling and eliminating malaria and other vector-borne diseases, such as dengue and lymphatic filariasis, in endemic areas. We take on a range of vector control activities and continuously look for new and innovative ways to prevent vectors from transmitting diseases to humans. The use of insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) remains one of the most effective methods of preventing malaria. We implement large-scale ITN distribution campaigns and support malaria programmes and other partners to develop effective and tailored national vector control strategies. We conduct research to gather evidence for improved interventions and develop approaches for context-specific deployment of contol measures within and outside human dwellings to reduce contact with potential vectors and transmission of mosquito-borne diseases.