Making data available

Malaria reports

Developing malaria epidemiological profiles to improve data availability and use of health information to guide malaria control  

Approach

The LINK programme collates extensive sets of prevalence data and develops these into epidemiologic and intervention profiles to guide malaria control in endemic countries. To increase data availability for, and engagement of National Malaria Programmes (NMPs), LINK develops country malaria epidemiological profiles and malaria timelines of significant malaria activities, policies and interventions.

To develop the epidemiological profiles, the LINK team work alongside national programmes to collate data on malaria prevalence, vector, health service provision and intervention coverage. Profiles include geo-spatially modelled malaria risk maps, validated databases of public health service provision, and ‘process’ maps that describe intervention changes over time where possible.  

The risk maps draw together data on parasite transmission risk from household surveys, the distribution of dominant vector specifies and the coverage of insecticide-treated mosquito nets (ITN), Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS) and mass drug administration. All maps present data the level of the country/health district, which allows for the data to be applied to targeted sub-national control efforts to accelerate progress towards targets of the national malaria strategic plans for each country. 

The development of timelines with national programmes and partners facilitates an opening of dialogue on which to build further collaboration between LINK and the programmes. Timelines show the main events in each country's history of working to prevent malaria. 

Scope

LINK aims to help countries maximise investments in malaria prevention and treatment and surveillance efforts by generating 25 detailed epidemiological profiles of malaria in 13 high-burden countries over four years.

LINK is currently working in: Demographic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Republic of South Sudan, Republic of Sudan, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Uganda.

Activities

LINK activities assist in identifying and targeting each country’s NMP-identified operational gaps, supporting the development of sustainable frameworks, and building country capacity to update and utilise the data profiles in future.

LINK identifies and analyses data on where the disease is concentrated, what the nature of local mosquito vectors is, which interventions are in place, and which interventions are needed. The resulting malaria profiles are presented in the context of other information relevant to malaria control, including the country's malaria control history and its health system's structure and function. In parallel, LINK works to understand decision-making structures and processes in countries in order to facilitate the use of the epidemiological profiles.

Data sources

LINK collates a wide range of data for the NMPs. The scope and volume of data collated to date and those provided to NMPs and partner organisations for Phase 2 countries so far is summarised in the table below. In addition to this data, verified datasets of geo-located public health facilities categorised by level (e.g. hospital, health centre or health post) were also provided to each NMP.  

This table shows evidence collated on country malaria epidemiology and control.

LINK phase 2 country Documents in library Published articles/MSc/PhD theses Implementation resources/reports
DRC 482 427 55
Ghana 561 553 8
Kenya 1595 1532 63
Malawi 228 134 94
Mali 165 138 27
Mozambique 212 164 48
Nigeria 846 822 24
Senegal 457 378 79
Sierra Leone 145 106 39
South Sudan 121 49 72
Sudan 516 503 13
Tanzania 591 265 26
Uganda 335 285 50
Total 5919 5371 548