By Kemo Cham
The Ministry of Health and partners have kick-started the 2016 national Malaria Indicator Survey (MIS).
The exercise which commenced on Monday involves about 200 health workers who are moving from house to house collecting data relating to the deadly malaria disease.
MIS is designed to measure the coverage of the core malaria control interventions which will help the country assesses its implementation strategies. The household survey, conducted every two years, is meant to gauge progress on outcomes and impact by measuring status of key malaria indicators. It will crucially provide much needed data for the Ministry of Health and Sanitation which is very critical for programming to improve on the reduction and control of the disease.
Malaria is one of the biggest public health challenges facing Sierra Leone, ranking as the biggest killer disease among children under five.
According to the 2013 MIS, Sierra Leone has a 43 percent prevalence rate of the parasitic disease. The country is ranked among the fifth most malaria endemic countries, according to World Malaria report.
Dr Samuel Juana Smith, Manager of the National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP), explained to Lifelines that the exercise is just random sampling and that as such only a select group of communities, amounting to 7, 000 households, would be targeted. He said data would be collected from 336 clusters, with 20 households per selected cluster.
The field staff will collect national, regional and district data from the representative sample of respondents, he said.
Smith said the survey was designed to measure the coverage of the core malaria control interventions defined in the 2011-2015 National Malaria Strategic Plan to help the country assess current implementation strategies. He added that the 2016 survey will be district specific and designed to measure the performance of each district and region, and that it would focus on specific issues and trends that are peculiar to the country situation.
The Global Fund is funding the initiative at the cost of US$ 1.3m. It is being implemented by the Catholic Relief Service (CRS), alongside the Ministry of Health and Sanitation through the NMCP.
The team also includes Statistics Sierra Leone, the College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences of the University of Sierra Leone, the World Health Organisation, and UNICEF.
The exercise is expected to end on August 8.
MIS was developed by the monitoring and evaluation working group of Roll Back Malaria, an International partnership which coordinates global efforts to fight the disease.
This will be the third survey conducted in Sierra Leone since the first one in 2010. The second, in 2013, was the first to include rapid diagnostic testing and microscopy to determine the national malaria prevalence among children under age five.
The 2013 survey found that there were more than 1.7 million cases of malaria in the country. And according to WHO, 4,326 people died of the disease that year.
Officials say this year’s exercise is timely coming during the post-Ebola recovery period.
Health workers who will conduct the exercise had undergone weeks of training. They will issue out questionnaires to people to fill. They will also take advantage to provide children aged 6-59 months with testing for anemia and malaria. Free treatment will be offered to those who test positive.
Colonel, Dr Sahr Foday, head of the 34 Military Hospital, is the Principal Investigator of the 2016 MIS. He said at a pre-launch press conference that the key objectives of the exercise were to measure the level of ownership and use of mosquito nets, assess coverage of the intermittent preventive treatment for pregnant Women, and identify treatment practices, including the use of specific antimalarial medications to treat malaria among children under 5, identify diagnostic trends prior to receiving antimalarial medications for treatment of fever and other malaria-like symptoms, measure the prevalence of malaria and anaemia among children age 6-59 months, assess knowledge, attitudes, and practices of malaria among women age 15-49 years, allow tracking of trends over time, and intended as a simpler, malaria focused survey alternative to DHS, MICS.
(C) Politico 29/06/16
