Burden &Epidemiology Bill Brieger | 14 Nov 2016 07:00 am
The Challenge of Reducing Malaria in Angola – High Transmission Provinces
Below is an abstract of a poster presentation today at the American Society of tropical Medicine 65th Annual meeting in Atlanta. The presentation was prepared by Jhpiego’s Angola team including Jhony Juarez, Margarita Gurdian-Sandoval, Julio Bonillo, and William R. Brieger. Please join us at the Late-breaker’s session at noon.
CONTEXT
- Angola has three major belts of malaria transmission
- The north is high transmission and borders on the heavy burden country of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
- The mid-section of the country is meso-endemic
- The south is considered low endemic
- This low endemic area brings Angola into the Southern African Elimination 8 countries.
METHODS: Field visits were made to six northern high burden provinces. Health information system (HIS) data were collected from each provincial health department. Supplementary HIS information was collected from the national malaria control program
FINDINGS: Data from the six high burden provinces reveal an overall upward trend in confirmed malaria. Cases from 2011, but with a jump of over 130,000 confirmed cases from 2014 to 2015. This occurred despite support from government and major malaria partners over the past decade. Overall cases in the country have risen from 2.73m in 2011 to 3.25m in 2015
NATIONAL MALARIA EFFORTS
- Between 2012 and 2015 2 million Long Lasting insecticide treated nets were distributed to a population of approximately 5 million in the 6 provinces
- This exceeded the desired 2 people per net ratio
Intermittent preventive treatment in pregnancy reached only 59% of women registering for antenatal care in 2015- Only 44% and 18% of women received the second and third IPTp doses respectively.
CHALLENGES
- A dual challenge makes performance of malaria indicators difficult
- The Global Fund grant had expired for more than a year
- The oil-based economy also suffered from the major global drop in prices
THE WAY FORWARD
- Angola requires concerted efforts by government and partners to scale up malaria control interventions
- Universal coverage targets must be sustained if these high burden northern provinces are to begin seeing a decline in the disease
on 15 Nov 2016 at 12:18 pm 1.prudence hamade said …
was the upturn in cases real or only better data collection and reporting. Any information on positivity rate or malaria prevalence
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Yes, there had been a hiatus in providing interventions when the Global Fund grant expired.