Uganda mid-term meeting

On 6 June 2017, LINK and Uganda’s National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP), along with stakeholders, met in Kampala to construct a 100-year timeline of malaria control in Uganda and discuss a way forward to complete the malaria risk profile. Groups present included the Resource Centre and Uganda Malaria Research Centre (UMRC) from the Ministry of Health, WHO AFRO, WHO, Makerere University School of Public Health, Malaria Consortium, USAID and the President’s Malaria Initiative, Abt Associates and Infectious Diseases Research Collaboration (IDRC).

The group spent half a day considering the trajectory of malaria control efforts in Uganda, moving on later into exploring provisional maps of malaria prevalence and discussing any remaining data gaps. From this meeting, LINK will produce a profile of malaria risk and a comprehensive timeline of malaria control.  

Dr Jimmy Opigo, Director of the NMCP, said of this project in his closing remarks,

“The risk map is very important. The concept now is not to look for high burden areas but to stratify responses and find areas where we are doing a nice job, and expand progress outwards.”

During the visit, LINK also met with various partners to gather the information needed to finalise the forthcoming malaria risk profile. The NMCP facilitated discussions with the Vector Control Division, School for Medical Entomology and the Insectary to discuss vector and resistance data, and additionally arranged for meetings with the Resource Centre to discuss routine health data and with IDRC to discuss sentinel site data.

Dr Damian Rutazaana, a leading epidemiologist at the NMCP and a key partner in the production of the risk profile, reflected on the network of partners supporting the risk profile,

“You [partners] are all the arms and legs of malaria control in Uganda, each with different strengths. This is what the NMCP is, all of this.”