The CSO Platform is supporting an MMV-funded and led implementation research project focusing on: (i) determining the feasibility of using community-based approaches to provide the 'Malakit' service among three target groups who have challenges accessing formal healthcare in Thailand, and (ii) identifying mechanisms between the community level and formal health system that could work to scale Malakit to populations facing significant barriers to health. The Malakit approach to malaria prevention and control involves the distribution of self-diagnosis and self-treatment kits to remote populations.
Objectives
- To determine the feasibility of providing community-based Malakit services (with malaria clinics and community members working in tandem) to mobile and migrant communities facing barriers to formal healthcare access.
- To identify mechanisms that effectively link the community level with formal health system to scale Malakit to border populations in high-risk areas.
Outcomes and impact
- Underserved communities reached to put Thailand back on track for malaria elimination. The Malakit project offers a promising model for delivering the latest antimalarial drugs to mobile and migrant populations along the Thailand–Myanmar border. If scaled effectively, this approach could contribute to curing patients and eliminating malaria in the region. Malaria Consortium will engage with Thailand’s Department of Vector-borne Diseases, the World Health Organization and MMV to advocate for policy support and integration of Malakit into Thailand’s malaria elimination strategy.
- Outbreak preparedness for border regions. Beyond malaria, the set-up of Malakit and the community networks established could be leveraged to deliver other essential medicines during future outbreaks or health emergencies for marginalised populations in border regions. Advocacy efforts aim to highlight the potential of Malakit as a delivery model in future health emergencies.
Activities
- Malaria Consortium and MMV will identify key points along migrant travel pathways where feasibility, kit use and return patterns can be assessed.
- The project team will carry out training, sensitisation and engagement with community leaders, and obtain approval from provincial health authorities.
- A census will assess travel plans, movement patterns, treatmentseeking behaviour and reported malaria cases in neighbouring areas to identify eligible individuals. Malaria Consortium will coordinate with malaria clinics and hospitals to facilitate G6PD testing and radical cure provision for participants.
- During follow-up with those who have received vivax radical cure to check for adverse events ahead of their travel, project staff will distribute the Malakit, explain the trial process and provide information and contact details. During regular checkins, staff will ask Malakit recipients about their experiences in using the kit.
- Findings will be presented at regional meetings and published in peer-reviewed journals.
Background
Until 2021, Thailand was making strong progress toward malaria elimination. It drastically reduced Plasmodium falciparum cases, reporting only 3,000 cases of malaria that year, mostly due to Plasmodium vivax.1 However, conflict and the collapse of the health system in neighbouring Myanmar have led to a resurgence of malaria in border areas of Thailand.2
In 2025, Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) partnered with the Thai National Malaria Control Programme to initiate the rollout of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) testing and tafenoquine (TQ) treatment in hospitals across Tak province, an area with a high malaria burden. G6PD testing is mandatory before giving radical cure (treatment to prevent relapse of P. vivax malaria). Radical cure — with single-dose TQ or different regimes of primaquine (PQ) plus chloroquine (CQ) — is selected according to the person’s degree of G6PD deficiency, to avoid fatal haemolytic anaemia in G6PD-deficient individuals. The CSO Platform — now part of Malaria Consortium — has helped to raise community awareness and improve adherence to G6PD testing and radical cure, and to ensure patient follow-up in the catchment areas of malaria clinics where TQ has been introduced.
Access to timely malaria treatment and radical cure for mobile and migrant populations living near the border is critical to contain the current outbreak, but a tailored approach is needed to overcome political, sociocultural and economic barriers to healthcare access.
References
- World Health Organization (WHO). Accelerating malaria elimination in the Greater Mekong. WHO; 2022.
- WHO. World Malaria Report 2025. WHO; 2025.
The CSO Platform is supporting an MMV-funded and led implementation research project focusing on: (i) determining the feasibility of using community-based approaches to provide the 'Malakit' service among three target groups who have challenges accessing formal healthcare in Thailand, and (ii) identifying mechanisms between the community level and formal health system that could work to scale Malakit to populations facing significant barriers to health. The Malakit approach to malaria prevention and control involves the distribution of self-diagnosis and self-treatment kits to remote populations.
Country/
Countries
Countries
Asia >
Thailand
Funder
Medicines for Malaria Venture
Funding
$66,124
Partners
Medicines for Malaria Venture