World Malaria Day
Test, Treat, Track: scaling up the fight against malaria
When Phon Phalep, a rice and maize farmer along the Thai-Cambodian border, developed a fever, chills and severe aches, he knew he might have malaria. He called on his neighbour, Bun Hoy, a village malaria volunteer, to ask for a malaria test. Photo: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
During the past decade, investments in malaria prevention and control have created unparalleled momentum and cut malaria death rate by over a quarter worldwide. However, malaria transmission still occurs in 99 countries and the disease caused an estimated 655,000 deaths in 2010. Investments are scaled up further to support prevention, control and elimination efforts like achieving universal bed net coverage for at-risk population groups, indoor residual spraying, prompt access to treatment etc. At the same time, however, the scale-up of diagnostic testing, treatment and surveillance has not received the same degree of attention. In the next few years, one of the biggest challenges will be to find the required resources to strengthen these three fundamental pillars of the existing global strategy to fight malaria. Such scale-up would allow endemic countries to make a major push towards achieving the health-related Millennium Development Goals and the World Health Assembly target of reducing the malaria burden by at least 75 percent by 2015. World Malaria Day was observed on April 24 this year focused WHO Global Malaria Programme's new initiative — T3: Test, Treat, Track. It will support malaria-endemic countries in their efforts to achieve universal coverage with diagnostic testing and antimalarial treatment, as well as in strengthening their malaria surveillance systems. Over 80 percent in many malaria endemic countries are still being treated without diagnostic testing. Endemic countries should be able to ensure that every suspected malaria case is tested, that every confirmed case is treated with a quality-assured antimalarial medicine, and that the disease is tracked through timely and accurate surveillance systems. Millions of people still lack ready access to appropriate treatment for malaria. The effort must be scaled up to ensure that every confirmed malaria case gets treated. Improved surveillance for malaria cases and deaths will help countries determine which areas or population groups are most affected and will also help to identify resurgences and map new trends — thus maximising the efficiency of prevention and control programmes. The scale-up of these three interconnected pillars will provide the much-needed bridge between efforts to achieve universal coverage with prevention tools and the goal of eliminating malaria deaths, and eventually eradicating the disease. In recent years, there has been major progress in the development of new diagnostic tools and highly effective antimalarial medicines. The challenge now is to ensure these tools get used, and that countries accurately measure their public health impact.
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