New Malaria Research Supports Quality of Care and Guides Health System Strengthening

Generating evidence that advances high-quality clinical care and guides health system decision-making is essential for malaria control and elimination. We’ve worked for over 40 years in close collaboration with academia, governments, and other strategic partners to support research advancing the fight against malaria. Here are some insights from some of our recent research publications: 

• Supportive supervision using digital data systems can enhance the quality of malaria case management. PMI Impact Malaria’s well-structured model to improve malaria treatment quality—Outreach, Training and Supportive Supervision (OTSS)—has been documented in a supplement of recent articles from Niger, Cameroon, Tanzania, Madagascar, Malawi, and Mali. Together, these publications suggest that digitized OTSS and related approaches have the potential to improve health facility readiness, healthcare worker competency, and quality of care, including for malaria in pregnancy.

• To address the emerging threat of malaria drug resistance, understanding the therapeutic efficacy of first-line malaria treatments is essential. A new study from PMI Impact Malaria tested responses and molecular resistance to a common malaria treatment called artemether-lumefantrine (AL) in children with uncomplicated malaria in Niger to guide national treatment policy. While there was some geographic variability in the efficacy of AL, more than 90 percent of children responded well to the treatment, justifying the continued use of AL for the treatment of uncomplicated malaria in that setting.

• After introducing insecticide-treated nets (ITNs), we must monitor their durability in real-world settings. An ITN durability monitoring study from PMI Vector Link/Evolve assessed two new ITNs in Burkina Faso. The study highlights the importance of post-market surveillance for monitoring the physical and chemical durability of ITNs, which are a vital element in the fight against malaria, but whose performance can vary widely depending on net type and context. This information is essential for data informed decision-making and policies at the national level.

Check out our resource library for more PSI research: PSI Resources | PSI

The information is gathered and curated by Susannah Gibbs, Senior Technical Writer, PSI, and Paul Bouanchaud, Senior Research Advisor, PSI.