“Malaria affects many people in my community, especially children. It is worse in the rainy season. Many people can’t afford treatment in the hospitals,” says Abdoulaye Bakary, a health provider at the Bogo health center in Balaza, the Far North region of Cameroon. At times, Abdoulaye has traveled more than 10 miles by bicycle to provide care to those who need it most and monitor their health.
Malaria prevention and treatment services are a critical component of national health systems in endemic areas. But too many people don’t have reliable access to that care. The good news: PSI is working to close this gap.
While having worked to test more than 90M people for malaria and treat nearly 180M malaria cases, PSI is increasingly supporting partner countries in their progress strengthening their own systems and health workforce for malaria diagnosis, treatment and drug-based prevention across health facilities and community outlets.
Further, with support from the United States Government through the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) Impact Malaria project, PSI works to strengthen quality of and access to malaria case management (CM) and prevention. Led by PSI, PMI Impact Malaria supports national governments to provide training to health workers like Abdoulaye that go beyond their health centers into their communities, provide these health workers with the right diagnostics and treatment so they can accurately diagnose patients with suspected fever and confirmed malaria cases with confidence.
PMI Impact Malaria also works with partner countries to deploy innovative approaches, including seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC), mass drug administration (MDA), or other drug-based approaches, that aim to keep communities safe and prevent malaria during the highest transmission season. Malaria health systems are also strengthened through the rigorous use of data for decision making.
“Impact Malaria (IM) enjoys an excellent reputation among in-country partners as a collaborative and cooperative malaria partner…..COVID-19 had profound impacts on the project’s ability to carry out activities as planned and in a timely way. IM found many innovative solutions.”
PMI Impact Malaria Mid-Term Evaluation, Sept 2021