Scaling Up Malaria Prevention

The large scale up of ITN distribution in Yemen and the residual house spraying activities are also made possible with the active involvement of dedicated female volunteers. One hundred and sixty such volunteers have been trained with Global Fund support. Contrary to men, women can enter any household. This allows them to brief entire families in malaria prevention through the use of bednets and the spraying of houses with insecticide.

In 3 years, thanks to such combined efforts, malaria cases have been reduced by 75% in Tihama.

Besides supporting prevention activities, the largest part of the malaria grant, worth US$ 11.9 million over five years, is used to strenghten the infrastructure of the National Malaria Control Program (NMCP) in order to ensure its sustainability. This is being achieved through building a regional center in Hodeida (capital of Tihama) and the new national headquarters of the NMCP in the capital city, Sana'a. The NMCP center, which is also meant to help support programs in the surrounding countries on the Arabian Peninsula and Africa, will be staffed with national specialists and technicians in areas such as laboratory diagnosis, vector control, entomology, monitoring and evaluation. The Global Fund helps train this specialized personnel as well as building a computerized network to monitor and coordinate Yemen's fight against the disease.

This fight extends to Socotra, the Yemeni island off the northeastern tip of Somalia where, until the late 1990s, malaria had reached catastrophic proportions. "Almost everyone had malaria. Even if they didn't have the symptoms, it was in their blood", recalls Dr. Jamal Amran, General Director of the National Malaria Program at the Ministry of Public Health and Population. "This year we have reported only 30 malaria cases on the whole island out of 50'000 inhabitants. (...) We are reaching a percentage of prevalence 0.045% during the malaria season compared to 30% to 80% in the past 5 years."

Now that construction work at the two NMCP sites is nearing completion and training of the staff is well under way, Dr. Jamal expresses appreciation for the role played by the Global Fund in helping Yemen's efforts to eliminate the disease and dreams of spreading Socotra's success story to the Tihama region as well as the rest of the country.

Read/Listen to an interview with Dr. Jamal Amran, Yemen's General Director of the National Malaria Program.