LEARNING COMMUNITY COUNTRIES

Learning together to tackle malaria

Women visiting health center The MACEPA Learning Community was initiated in 2006 to bring countries together to develop an adaptable blueprint for accelerated, nationally led malaria prevention and control efforts aimed to rapidly impact health and economic indicators.

Zambia, the first country with which MACEPA partnered to implement the scale-up for impact approach, is the founding Learning Community country. Zambia has become a standard-setter in malaria control and has made remarkable progress toward its goal of reducing malaria incidence by 75 percent by 2011. Over 4 million insecticide-treated nets were distributed in 2006 and 2007; two-thirds of all pregnant women now take the minimum recommended two doses of malaria prevention medicine, and malaria parasite prevalence in children under age five has been cut in half.

In the fall of 2007, MACEPA began working with Ethiopia’s Ministry of Health and its partners to plan and implement Ethiopia’s first national-scale malaria indicator survey, using tools and methods developed by the Roll Back Malaria Partnership’s Monitoring and Evaluation Reference Group and tested in Zambia. Results from this survey demonstrated the reach of Ethiopia's ongoing malaria intervention scale-up efforts, which have included a new, more effective anti-malarial drug policy and the distribution of nearly 20 million ITNs since 2005. Over two-thirds of households in malarious regions are now protected by either an ITN or IRS.

MACEPA is engaging with other leading countries in malaria control to demonstrate a flexible model for scale-up, setting a new standard for malaria control in sub-Saharan Africa. Countries joining the Learning Community will deploy a comprehensive package of evidence-based malaria prevention and control strategies while strengthening the cycle of program planning, resourcing, implementing, evaluating, and advocating.

Photo by David Jacobs.