The Value Added of Incorporating Qualitative Approaches into Malaria Surveillance, Monitoring, and Evaluation.

Progress toward malaria elimination and improvements in the performance of national malaria control programs (NMCPs) have stalled in recent years. The current COVID-19 pandemic further threatens building on previous gains. Surveillance, monitoring, and evaluation (SME) are critical for the continued success of NMCPs because they provide the information necessary for effective program planning and management.

Evaluating malaria programmes in moderate- and low-transmission settings: practical ways to generate robust evidence.

Background: Many countries have made substantial progress in scaling-up and sustaining malaria intervention coverage, leading to more focalized and heterogeneous transmission in many settings. Evaluation provides valuable information for programmes to understand if interventions have been implemented as planned and with quality, if the programme had the intended impact on malaria burden, and to guide programmatic decision-making. Low-, moderate-, and heterogeneous-transmission settings present unique evaluation challenges because of dynamic and targeted intervention strategies.

Achievements and challenges of implementation in a mature iCCM programme: Malawi case study.

Background: Malawi has a mature integrated community case management (iCCM) programme that is led by the Ministry of Health (MOH) but that still relies on donor support. From 2013 until 2017, under the Rapid Access Expansion (RAcE) programme, the World Health Organization supported the MOH to expand and strengthen iCCM services in four districts. This paper examines Malawi's iCCM programme performance and implementation strength in RAcE districts to further strengthen the broader programme.