US announces first Malaria Country program for Sierra Leone

Map showing where PMI is present

By Kemo Cham

KMN - The United States government has announced the institution of an anti-malaria Country Programme for Sierra Leone for the first time as part of its global response to the major killer disease.

Sierra Leone was named on Thursday among five high burden Malaria countries in Africa to benefit from the multi-million dollar healthcare investment under the US President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI).

PMI is the US government’s answer in leading the global fight against Malaria. It is jointly implemented by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC).

USAID Administrator, Mark Green, made the formal announcement including Sierra Leone into the initiative at a forum on Malaria in New York last week, a statement from the US embassy in Freetown which was copied too me said. It noted that the move is part of an expansion drive of the PMI which was initiated by President Barrack Obama. Under this expansion drive, new Country Programmes are being opened in Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, and Niger, while an existing programme in Burkina Faso will be expanded, the statement said.

The Sierra Leone Country program will receive US$15 million in the first year of its implementation, Mr Green said at a Roll Back Malaria event on the sidelines of the just concluded United Nations General Assembly in New York.

      

Malaria is a parasitic disease transmitted by mosquitoes. The parasites invade and destroy red blood cells in humans. In Sierra Leone the disease is 40 percent prevalent and it’s the top killer disease among children, thereby contributing largely to the high rate of infant mortality in the country. According to the Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MoSH), Sierra Leone records over 2 million outpatient visits due to malaria annually, with children under five accounting for about a million of this.

In collaboration with the National Malaria Control Program (NMCP) of the MoHS and the government’s health partners, PMI will scale up a comprehensive, integrated package of life-saving interventions in targeted communities.

This, according to the US embassy statement, will include both prevention (insecticide treated mosquito nets and indoor residual spraying) and treatment interventions. It will include mosquito surveillance, malaria case surveillance, monitoring and evaluation of impact, and behavior change communication activities.  

PMI was established in 2005 as a bipartisan effort initiated by President George W. Bush with the goal of reducing the burden of malaria in Africa and Southeast Asia. Its immediate target is to have nearly 70 million more at-risk people have access to insecticide-treated nets, anti-malarial drugs, and other interventions.
Sierra Leone’s President Ernest Bai Koroma, during a White House meeting in 2013 with President Obama, requested the inclusion of his country in the PMI. And last year March the Obama White House announced plans to increase funding for the initiative with a request to Congress for an additional $200 million. That was supposed to bring the total funding requested to $874 million for the current fiscal year, representing a 30 percent increase.

With the addition of Sierra Leone and the other four new focus countries, PMI’s programs in sub-Saharan Africa now covers 24 countries, in addition to Burma, Cambodia, and Thailand in the Asian region.

This expansion will bring some 90 million additional people at risk of malaria in West and Central Africa, bringing to approximately 332 million people covered by the Initiative.

“No child should die from a disease that is both preventable and treatable,” said Mr Green in New York.

“The Administration and Congress believe in the effectiveness of the PMI program. Expanding further into west and central Africa will save lives, prevent illness and unburden health systems – allowing kids to attend school and adults to work.”