Video: Tackling Malaria through Private Sector Partnerships

Falling on World Malaria Day, this panel discussed the role of the private sector in the ongoing fight against malaria in the developing world. A distinguished panel of health and private sector professionals analyzed projects like those being implemented in Equatorial Guinea and assessed what lessons were learnt and can be applied in other contexts, specifically through this unique public-private partnership model.

Panel (From left to right): Dr. Luis Benavente [MCDI], Dr. Michel Slotman [Texas A&M] Dr. Chris Schwabe [MCDI], Dr. Adel Chaouch [Marathon Oil], Jennifer Cooke [Moderator from CSIS]

The presentation can be found here

Source: http://csis.org/multimedia/video-tackling-malaria-through-private-sector-partnerships

World Malaria Day 2011: Achieving Progress and Impact

This year's World Malaria Day theme---"Achieving Progress and Impact"---highlights recent successes in efforts to and causes global partners to take stock of what needs to be done to to reach near zero deaths by 2015.

Success and Challenges

In the last 10 years, funding has increased and many partners have stepped up efforts and joined together to scale up life-saving malaria interventions, especially in Africa.

For example, by the end of 2010, enough insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs) had been delivered to sub-Saharan Africa to cover three-quarters of the 765 million people living in areas where malaria is transmitted.

Increased efforts and funding have led to progress and impact...more

Increased adherence to negative malaria test results in Benin

Previous studies http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10403337 have shown that clinicians often prescribe antimalarials to individuals with negative malaria tests.

Supportive supervisions done in Benin by NMCP and IMaD, USAID flagship for malaria diagnosis, show a reduction in the proportion of health facilities treating most patients with a negative malaria tests with antimalarials:

Many clinicians still write a prescription at the same time as a laboratory request because turnaround time is several hours long, rural patients won’t wait or won’t return for follow-up visits. Clinicians feel withholding antimalarials will put patients coming from remote villages at risk of dying.

IMaD will continue working to increase quality and timeliness of tests and the utilization of tests results in making therapeutic decisions.