Countdown 2010
Photo by Ron Haviv/VII
Counting malaria out
In 2008 the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership unveiled the Global Malaria Action Plan (GMAP), which clearly sets out what needs to be done to meet the short, medium and long term goals of malaria control, elimination and eventual eradication.
On World Malaria Day, the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership kick-started its "Counting malaria out" campaign. This on-going 2-year campaign is intensifying global efforts to reach the first important malaria milestone by 2010 and to strenghen systems in endemic countries for the long haul of sustained malaria control and elimination.
The "Counting Malaria Out" campaign calls on malaria endemic countries, RBM partners and donors to put extra efforts into comprehensively tracking progress along the way to universal coverage by 2010The meaning of universal coverage:
Prevention
100% of the population at risk is provided with locally appropriate preventive
interventions. Coverage is defined as follows:
• LLINs: one long lasting insecticidal net for every two people.
• IRS: a household is routinely sprayed with indoor residual spraying.
• IPTp: every pregnant woman living in a high transmission setting receives at least
2 doses of an appropriate antimalarial drug during her pregnancy.
Case management
100% of patients receive locally appropriate case management interventions.
Coverage is defined as follows:
• Diagnosis: prompt parasitological diagnosis by microscopy or rapid diagnostic tests
(RDTs).
• Treatment: treatment with effective drugs within 24 hours after the first symptoms
appear.
Click for source, near-zero deaths by 2015 and the gradual elimination of malaria.
To be able to successfully combat malaria, countries and their international partners need to strengthen systems for collecting data at district, national, regional and global levels. Reliable data-collection, sound data analysis and effective data communication enable an informed and efficient response to malaria and are critical to the long-term success of the global malaria control effort.
We need to monitor challenges that may impede the implementation of the GMAP. We need to keep track of the new initiatives and solutions that are being put in place. We need to be able to tell where exactly we are at in the areas of development, production and delivery of nets and treatments, building malaria control capacity, committing funds and resources for scale-up of interventions, monitoring malaria cases, or informing, educating and mobilizing communities to act against malaria.
Help count the strides we collectively make towards eliminating malaria. Make the lives of every man, woman and child count.
