Malaria Policy Recommendations

Malaria elimination requires strong and cross-cutting policies that focus on data, sustain leadership, and promote integration. This checklist provides a framework for comprehensive malaria elimination policies.

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Focusing on Data

Inform evidence-based policy decisions through systematic collection and analysis of malaria data.

Strengthen surveillance systems 

• Integrate malaria surveillance in broader health management information systems, and where applicable, systems for reporting notifiable diseases.
• Incorporate climate-related health risk indicators for information sharing and integrated policy making.
  
• Collect and analyse malaria incidence data disaggregated by age, gender, disability and other socio-economic factors.
  

Employ rigorous evidence on malaria program activities and effectiveness

• Analyse access and usage of malaria services by at-risk community. 
• Understand how social, cultural, and economic factors shape malaria risk.
  
• Monitor and evaluate innovative techniques through pilot programs to inform effective delivery of key malaria services.
  

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Sustaining Leadership 

Build strong leadership and sustained political will towards malaria elimination by actively collaborating across sectors, borders, and diseases.

Formalise a whole of Government approach to malaria elimination

• Promote increased collaboration with other sectors particularly agricultural, environmental, tribal affairs, women and child development, economic development, and meteorological sectors at different levels of government.
• Develop cross-border, cross-disease partnerships to improve outbreak prevention, detection, and containment.
  
• Encourage community dialogues that cohesively address more than one health issue and their interaction with each other such as malaria and nutritional health.
  

Ensure inclusive leadership

• Ensure adequate representation of at-risk communities in decision making. 
• Create leadership opportunities for at-risk communities in the health sector and malaria research, programming, and decision-making fields.
  

Sustain malaria financing

• Step up domestic investment to accelerate malaria elimination and decrease reliance on external funding and shocks.
• Include malaria services in universal health coverage policies and budgeting.
  
• Budget comprehensive incentives for community health workers, including supplementary skill programs and refresh training.
  

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Promoting Integration 

Integrate malaria into broader health system to reduce inefficiencies and improve health outcomes, and to sustain malaria interventions beyond elimination.

Design phased approach to integrate malaria services

• Integrate interventions at the community level into a broader package of care and expand the role of community health workers to include malaria, pneumonia, diarrhoea, severe acute malnutrition among others.
• Formalize malaria diagnosis protocols for co-infections with similar clinical symptoms.
  
• Formalize the integration and accreditation of community-based workers in national health systems.
  
• Integrate preparedness plans using climate-related information from weather information and seasonal forecasts.
  

Ensure quality of malaria programming

• Ensure the quality of commodities while expanding access by ensuring collaboration disease programs and regulators for quality control activities.
• Strengthen regulatory oversight and quality assurance mechanisms throughout the supply chain.
  
• Ensure active collaboration between national malaria programs and primary health centres to improve access to quality malaria diagnosis, treatment and control interventions.