Seasonal malaria chemoprevention

Malaria Consortium is a leading implementer of seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC), a highly effective intervention to prevent malaria in those most vulnerable to the disease's effects. It involves administering monthly doses of antimalarial drugs to children aged 3-59 months during the peak malaria transmission season.

In 2024, we're targeting 25 million children with SMC across 7 countries: Burkina Faso, Chad, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Sudan, Togo and Uganda. We are also providing technical assistance to support SMC activities in Côte d'Ivoire. Our SMC activities are made possible by philanthropic donations as a result of our programme being awarded ‘top charity' status by the independent evaluator, GiveWell, in addition to support in some areas from the Global Fund and KOICA.

Our latest Philanthropy Report

Each year, Malaria Consortium publishes a comprehensive Philanthropy Report detailing how we use philanthropic funds for SMC. In 2023, we reached 25 million children with SMC, 17 million of which were reached using philanthropic funding.

Read the report

What is SMC?

Seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) is a highly effective, community-based intervention to prevent malaria in those most vulnerable to the disease's effects. It involves administering monthly courses of antimalarial medicines to children aged 3-59 months during peak malaria transmission season.

Learn more

SMC publications

Our SMC-related publications include journal articles from our cutting-edge research, technical briefs and project briefs. We also produce infographics, presentations and annual reviews including our annual Philanthropy Report and Coverage and Quality Report.

Learn more

The future of SMC

Over the past decade, SMC has been scaled up across the Sahel region. Looking forward, Malaria Consortium is leading the conversation on the future of SMC, exploring the potential for expansion to new geographies, alternative drug regimens and co-implementation with other health services.

In practice: Together with the national malaria programmes in Mozambique and Uganda, Malaria Consortium conducted implementation studies in 2020/21 to explore if SMC can be a viable malaria prevention strategy in those countries despite known resistance to SPAQ.

The studies found that SMC with SPAQ is safe, feasible and acceptable in the local context, with high coverage achieved across the study areas. Learn more in the webinar recording below.

SMC research

Malaria Consortium conducts high-quality implementation and operational research that provides evidence for programme staff, Ministries of Health and partners to make informed decisions to improve SMC programme performance and quality of SMC implementation, for example by driving adaptation and innovation. In addition to philanthropic funding, our research has been supported by funders such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Task Force for Global Health.

In practice: We recently conducted a study to test the integration of vitamin A supplementation (VAS) with SMC campaigns in Bauchi state, Nigeria. We found that this co-implementation can significantly increase VAS coverage and be achieved at a minimal additional unit cost to the existing SMC campaign.

Learn more

Monitoring and evaluation

Malaria Consortium undertakes monitoring and evaluation (M&E) activities to ensure that SMC is implemented to quality standards. Data are collected through a variety of methods, including routine programme data, regular end-of-cycle and end-of-round household surveys, case-control studies and administrative databases, such as the national health management information system (HMIS).

In practice: We conducted extensive reviews of the operational aspects of the SMC programme in five countries including data sources and collection methods, as well as a review of the conceptual frameworks of the impact of health programmes to develop a comprehensive framework for monitoring and evaluating SMC programmes.

Learn more

SMC Alliance

Malaria Consortium plays a leading role in the SMC Alliance, a group that brings together SMC implementers, researchers and stakeholders from around the world. Malaria Consortium chairs the Alliance’s research sub-group and acts as secretariat on its M&E and advocacy and communication sub-groups.

Learn more