Plan to fight malaria in Sudan
There are 300-500 million cases of malaria yearly and more than 1 million people die of malaria. 9 out of 10 cases occur in Africa, south of the Sahara.
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Malaria kills a child every 40 seconds
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 GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has provided Plan UK with a grant of £312,264 to support 372 communities in Sudan with a population of nearly 700,000 in their fight against malaria. The communities are located along the western bank of the White Nile, in the White Nile State. Malaria in Sudan
Sudan is the largest country in Africa, comprising more than 8% of the entire continent. The total population is estimated to be 30.3 million inhabitants, of whom 75% live in rural areas. In Sudan, there are 7.5 million cases and 35,000 deaths every year due to malaria. Whilst the whole population is at risk from the disease, there is higher incidence among pregnant women and children under five years of age. This results in complicated pregnancies, low birth weight and infant mortality.
GSK Africa Malaria Partnership
Through its African Malaria Partnership, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) aims to support communities through the scale-up of effective behavioural development activities whose primary focus is malaria control. The GlaxoSmithKline African Malaria Partnership (AMP) is GSK's community partnership programme to combat malaria. Its aim is the development of effective malaria control behaviours in African communities.
Plan-GSK Partnership
In the long term, the aim of this partnership will be to reduce morbidity and mortality rates by 50% in the programme area by the year 2010.
Plan will work along with communities to educate them on malaria prevention and treatment. Specialist training is being provided to doctors, medical assistants, nurses, laboratory technicians and community health workers on clinical diagnosis and case management of malaria using treatment protocol and guidelines.
The partnership will also advocate for and assist in the development of policies and practices supportive of malaria prevention and treatment.
Information, Education and Communication (IEC) material will be produced to promote behavioural change in order to reduce the likelihood of malaria infection and, where appropriate, improve the treatment or management of the disease. Training will target pregnant women, mothers of children below five years of age and school-going children as they have been found to be the most susceptible as well as the worst sufferers.
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| Insecticide treated nets will drastically reduce the number of malaria deaths every year |
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Helping communities help themselves
Plan believes in building the capacity of local communities to ensure that they are able to become responsible for their own lives. As a part of this commitment, the programme will set up a health committee in every community and train community volunteers.
372 Health committees will be trained to be responsible for coordinating all the community-based interventions including malaria control measures, malaria treatment, and planning, monitoring and evaluation of malaria interventions.
1,860 community volunteers will receive special training in treating bed nets, spraying, and usage of anti-malarial drugs. The community volunteers will play a vital role in the programme by visiting homes, identifying mosquito breeding sites for spraying, re-impregnating bed nets with insecticides and undertaking spraying campaigns in case of epidemics.
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| Community Volunteers play an important role in malaria prevention |
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Other Activities
- Providing Insecticides Treated Bed Nets and promoting their use
- Intermittent Preventive Treatments (IPT) for 100,000 pregnant women
- Supporting expansion of the Government and WHO project which targets zero mortality from malaria at hospital level
- Supporting clinical, epidemiological and operational researches in the field of malaria prevention and treatment in Sudan
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Malaria Facts
- Malaria kills over one million people each year, about 3,000 a day: the majority of victims are children under five years of age.
- Malaria kills a child every 40 seconds.
- Over 700,000 children under five will die needlessly from malaria this year.
- The cheapest anti-malaria drug-chloroquine-is rapidly losing its effectiveness in almost all endemic countries.
- Malaria-endemic countries are among the world's most impoverished.
- Malaria causes death, reduces the productivity of agriculture, and affects tourism and external investment.
Source: UNICEF |
It is envisaged that the Plan GSK partnership will facilitate human development and poverty reduction by reducing the malaria disease burden in Plan communities.
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