A response to my rant on failed malaria containment in Myanmar. It is from Tim France and posted with his permission.
Will India, with all its resources, be able to stop artemisinin-resistant malaria? Will the people of Myanmar need to accept control and containment because elimination does not appear to be feasible at present in the country?
Jamie
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Quite right. There has been a major change of strategy to address drug-resistant malaria in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS): from one focusing on containment to regional malaria elimination. That decision was taken in September 2014 by WHO's Malaria Policy Advisory Committee (MPAC) and constitutes a major u-turn.
Just last week, the WHO Regional Hub for the Emergency Response to Artemisinin Resistance in the GMS held a consultation of partners (http://bit.ly/1At87XL), during which a draft elimination strategy was shared (in hard copy) and discussed. The aim is to have the GMS elimination strategy approved by the World Health Assembly in May (2015) along with a new global technical strategy on malaria.
But we should expect to see continuation of control/containment in some places for a while yet... One of the elements of the GMS elimination strategy is "Flattening the epidemiological landscape by reducing transmission in highly endemic areas where elimination does not appear to be feasible at present." In other words, in some areas localized control/containment will continue in order to bring transmission down to levels where elimination can then be achieved.
I have the slides from the session last week where the regional GMS elimination strategy was presented if anyone is interested, but don't yet have a soft copy of the strategy itself.
Tim France
tim@iniscommunication.com
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