Strengthening country capacity to improve malaria control

Strengthening country capacity to improve malaria control

With a prevalence of 46% of children under five in rural areas , malaria is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in Mozambique.  The disease represents nearly half of all outpatient visits and more than half of all inpatient visits at paediatric clinics.

To support Mozambique’s effort s to  lower the high burden of malaria , the WHO and the Roll Back Malaria Partnership have since 2009 supported malaria endemic countries to conduct in-depth comprehensive programme reviews to strengthen country capacity, structures and systems improving programme performance within the national health system. 

In June 2013, WHO Mozambique hosted a mission to review the implementation of the annual plan of the National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP). To follow up on the mission, the WHO Inter-country Support Team for Eastern and Southern Africa visited Mozambique in October 2013 to support the overall management of the National Malaria Control Programme and to strengthen the health promotion, advocacy, communications and social mobilization component of the Programme.

After reviewing progress since last mission, the team provided a set of recommendations and next steps to scale up malaria control in Mozambique, including;

Strengthening the M&E system at all levels;
Strengthening malaria data reporting from health facility level and integrate missing outpatient data (including data collected by APEs) within the upgraded national health information system (HMIS);
Finalization of the National Malaria Control Programme management database and its implementation  at provincial level including provision of M&E training and supervision at all levels;
Finalization of the annual health promotion operational plan with emphasis on continuous mobilisation of partners to strengthen national institutional capacity. Long term sustainability should be considered as malaria health promotion activities are mainly undertaken by implementing partners; 
Strengthening coordination of malaria health promotion, advocacy, communication, and social mobilization activities at all levels by using the 5Ws tool (who, does what, where when and how); 
Strengthening the malaria partnership coordination including joint field supervisions at all levels  
To support the implementation of the recommendations provided, the NMCP and WHO Inter-count

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