Sierra Leone embarks on malaria rapid impact assessment
The National Malaria Control Programme of the Ministry of Health and Sanitation in collaboration with the World Health Or-ganization has conducted orientation of field enumerators to un-dertake malaria rapid impact assessment in the country. This is taking into consideration the recent increased financial invest-ment and coverage of anti-malaria interventions in the country which are expected to result in reduction of malaria cases and deaths. The assessment will be carried out from 6-9 October in selected public/private hospitals around the country.
The objectives of the impact assessment are:
to measure impact on trends of malaria cases and deaths over the recent years;
to strengthen surveillance and deployment of interventions and resources to most affected regions/areas.
Rapid impact assessment using retrospective health facility data is a method used in countries to evaluate the strength and chal-lenges of health systems and disease surveillance with the aim of measuring the malaria specific impact. In developing countries, national disease surveillance system is insufficiently developed to reliably inform progress and impact of anti-malarial interven-tions. Data recorded during the past recent years will be collected from 37 public, private and mission owned hospitals using a data collection tool adapted to the country's context. The collected data will be systematically analyzed, interpreted and used to as-sess the progress of malaria interventions in the country. A scien-tist from the WHO Global Malaria Programme is facilitating the assessment.