Elimination &Epidemiology Bill Brieger | 26 Oct 2015 04:18 am
Readiness for Malaria Elimination: Using HMIS data to Map Malaria Test Positivity in Huambo Province, Angola
Colleagues[1] from the Ministry of Health Angola, Jhpiego and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of public Health are presenting a poster at the 64th ASTMH Annual Meeting in Philadelphia at noon on Monday 26th October 2015. Please stop by Poster LB-5094 and discuss the results as presented in the Abstract below.
Huambo Province in the south central highlands of Angola has a population of nearly 2 million, or 15% of the nation’s total. It is classified in the stable meso-endemic belt of the country, but is in the process of revising its malaria strategy to bring it closer to the pre-elimination phase on the pathway to malaria elimination. This means aiming to achieve 5% slide positivity rate for malaria parasites during the height of the transmission season (Novemb
er to January).
The health information system of the country reports information of positive and negative results of testing for suspected malaria cases from hospitals and clinics. The former use microscopy, while the latter rely on malaria rapid diagnostic tests (mRDTs). This information was analyzed for the past three high transmission periods and variations are reported herein among the 11 municipalities (districts) of the province.
The overall test positivity rates for all three seasons were 11% for microscopy and 25% for mRDTs among the 212,102 persons tested. The 4 municipalities in the northern part of the province ranged from 16-26% slide positivity and 24-44% mRDT positivity. The remaining municipalities in the south and central area ranged from 1-5% slide positivity and 3-16% mRDT positivity. Only one municipality achieved a positivity rate of <5% for both tests.
Moving forward, Huambo first intends to improve on the quality and coverage of malaria testing. The Ministry of Health will also focus on sustained control measures in the north, and begin more detailed mapping of malaria incidence in the central and southern municipalities to provide better targeting of interventions.
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[1] João Carlos F. Juliana, William R. Brieger, Jhony Juare3, Connie Lee, Clementino Sacanombo