As a leading non-profit organisation specialising in the prevention, control and treatment of malaria and other communicable diseases, Malaria Consortium will have a strong presence at the 6th MIM Pan-African Malaria Conference this October and will be hosting its own symposium.
For the past decade, Malaria Consortium has been focused on malaria control and working towards elimination through a range of integrated approaches to service delivery, research and advocacy. MIM 2013’s theme "Moving towards malaria elimination: Investing in research and control", offers an excellent platform for the organisation to provide an overview of some of its initiatives in Africa and Asia that are not only helping bring about a reduction to the malaria burden, particularly for the most vulnerable, but also supporting Ministries of Health in their push towards elimination.
On Thursday 10th October at 5pm in Meeting Room 11 Malaria Consortium will be hosting a symposium: “Scalable innovations for improved malaria control in the era of elimination”. The aim is to share learning from programmes carried out in a number of countries in Africa and Asia to highlight the importance of integrated community-based health delivery systems in the fight against malaria. The symposium will include speakers from John Snow Inc (JSI) and Save the Children with the World Health Organisation’s Franco Pagnoni as moderator.
The symposium is intended to inspire creative thinking around ways of improving efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability of community-based health programmes through nationally relevant and locally adaptable innovations. Malaria Consortium’s speakers will share experiences from large scale implementation on using mobile health (mHealth) for resistance containment and improved quality of care at community level, and on the importance of community engagement in malaria prevention and control.
The organisation will also be presenting on a range of other issues at the conference. Among these will be three poster presentations on its experience from the Comic Relief funded Pioneer project in Uganda.
The factors determining use and non-use of long lasting insecticide treated nets (LLINs) following a universal distribution campaign, Patient-provider communications around rapid diagnostic tests, and Entomological surveillance following a LLIN universal coverage campaignAn oral presentation will be given on Malaria Consortium’s large-scale entomological surveillance programme, Beyond Garki, around monitoring changes in the epidemiology of malaria in the era of large scale interventions.
Finally, as part of a wider symposium, Malaria Consortium will be sharing its experience on the introduction of seasonal malaria chemoprevention in northern Nigeria based on extensive formative research, on Wednesday 9th October at 3pm in Meeting Room 22.
Malaria Consortium looks forward to a productive 6th MIM conference at this crucial time for innovative thinking and research as we move away from vertical programming towards an integrated approach for malaria control.