USAID ANNOUNCES MALARIA CAPACITY STRENGTHENING PROGRAMME
Maputo, 12 Dec (AIM) – The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), on Monday announced the USAID Malaria Capacity Strengthening (MCAPS) programme.
This is a five-year initiative to improve the quality of malaria services in Mozambique, which forms part of the broader US President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) to eliminate malaria.
A press release from the US embassy, notes that Mozambique has made considerable progress toward reducing malaria deaths, which fell from 970 in 2018 to 408 in 2021. However, Mozambique is one of six countries accounting for more than half of all global malaria cases.
The MCAPS program will be implemented by MCD Global Health (which is a public health non-profit organization and member of the National Network of Public Health Institutes) in the worst hit Mozambican provinces (Nampula, Zambezia and Manica).
It will work with a variety of non-governmental partners, and with the Ministry of Health’s National Malaria Control Program at national, provincial, and district levels.
This consortium, the release says, “will work with and support health facilities to provide higher-quality malaria health services, improving Mozambicans’ health and well-being. This will not only include training, coaching, and mentoring of health workers, but also activities such as updating national guidelines and policies, and improving systems for how malaria data is collected and used across districts and health facilities in Nampula, Zambézia, and Manica provinces”.
USAID, the release adds, is investing more than 29.9 million dollars in this programme over the next five years.
The U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative supports 24 partner countries in sub-Saharan Africa and 3 programs in the Greater Mekong Subregion in Southeast Asia to control and eliminate malaria.
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