Costing Tool for Malaria Interventions

In the Greater Mekong Sub-region, progresses towards eliminating P. falciparum malaria must be accelerated to address the global health emergency of anti-malarial drug resistance.

Many researchers and practitoners believe that treating only patients suspected of malaria is insufficient to eliminate the disease as there are a large number of patients that are infected but show no symptoms. They constitutes a reservoir for the disease and achieving malaria eliminaton will be impossible if these asymptomatic cases go untreteated.

Mass drug administration (MDA) is the administration of antimalarial treatment to every member of a defined population or every person living in a defined geographical area (except those for whom the medicine is contraindicated) at approximately the same time and often at repeated intervals.

MDA is receiving increasing attention as a potential component in the toolkit for malaria elimination. For most public health professionals, MDA is a novel tool for which the cost associated is unknown and difficult to evaluate. To help bridge this gap, my colleague Shwe Sin developped a costing model and we went on to create an App to make the costing model accessible (and useful) to decision makers.