Senior Lecturer at UCT, Stephanie Van Wyk says the initiative is supported by regional health ministers and is a significant step toward maintaining the effectiveness of life-saving anti-malarial medications.

She says the protocol can help determine what medications are available to treat a patient.

“With this protocol they can inform community healthcare workers, general practitioners to say that okay we see that there is a case of malaria in a young child and it’s not clearing this child remains sick. What are the available medications that we can use to treat this patient. How can we look at a regional level? Which areas are hotspots? Which cross-border regions should we be taking a closer look at? Where should we control the vector, that being the mosquito? Where is more spraying or pesticides needed to really reduce the load of malaria transmission in that region?”

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