Want a few details on how elimination can happen? First and foremost, an elimination program requires rapid, granular surveillance so that every malaria case in the entire country is promptly identified. Akros partners with local Ministries of Health to build innovative systems using mobile phones and simple decision support frameworks, capable of picking up malaria cases not otherwise found by traditional health facilities. Read more here.

Second, anti-malaria interventions must be applied in the exact right places, at the exact right times to be effective. Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS) is a critical anti-malaria intervention, costing millions of dollars per year to support per country. Until Akros developed Reveal (formerly mSpray), the first GIS-integrated electronic data capture tool for IRS monitoring, it was nearly impossible to verify IRS operations were being applied to the exact right areas. Now with Reveal, an open-source product, countries are able to precisely monitor the progress of a number of health interventions, including vaccination campaigns, foci investigations, mass drug administration, and seasonal malaria chemoprophylaxis campaigns. Read more here.

Third, partners must be willing to invest heavily in capacity building and technical assistance to their host government counterparts. It is no use attempting malaria elimination if the tools or strategies you plan to use can’t be maintained or supported by the host country. Akros stays closely aligned with its host country counterparts. Akros works with the national programs of countries across Africa to set up the systems to monitor progress toward their elimination goals and support their achievement.

*The World Health Organization defines malaria elimination as the permanent interruption of local mosquito-borne malaria transmission in a defined geographical area, usually in a country.