Meeting report of the WHO technical consultation on malaria case management in the private sector in high-burden countries

Overview

Following up on a previous technical consultation organized in 2018 on universal access to core malaria interventions in high-burden countries, the meeting was organized to review the data supporting the rationale for an international effort to engage private sector players in malaria case management, to review the laws, regulations and policies influencing the use of medicines and point-of-care diagnostic tests in malaria case management in a set of high-burden countries in Africa, to identify the main bottlenecks and outline steps, including research priorities, to reduce barriers and thus enable improved quality of care for malaria across the entire health sector in each of these countries, and drawing upon documented lessons learned from major global, regional and country initiatives, to improve malaria case management in the private sector. 

The meeting was attended by representatives of the 5 countries in sub-Saharan Africa where, according to countrywide household surveys conducted in 2014–2017, the majority of febrile children (under 5 years) seek treatment in the private sector: Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda, as well as by representatives from the United Republic of Tanzania and Kenya.