Navigating the COVID-19 Crisis to Sustain Community-Based Malaria Interventions in Cambodia.

Cambodia has made impressive progress in reducing malaria trends and, in 2018, reported no malaria-related deaths for the first time. However, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic presents a potential challenge to the country's goal for malaria elimination by 2025. The path toward malaria elimination depends on sustained interventions to prevent rapid resurgence, which can quickly set back any gains achieved.Malaria Consortium supported mobile malaria workers (MMWs) to engage with target communities to build acceptance, trust, and resilience. At the start of the pandemic, Malaria Consortium conducted a COVID-19 risk assessment and quickly developed and implemented a mitigation plan to ensure MMWs were able to continue providing malaria services without putting themselves or their patients at risk. Changes in malaria intervention coverage and community uptake have been monitored to gauge the indirect effects of COVID-19. Comparisons have been made between output indicators reported in 2020 and from the same month-period of the previous year.In general, malaria service intervention coverage and utilization rates did not decline in 2020. Rather, the reported figures show there was a substantial increase in service utilization. Preliminary internal reviews and community meetings show that despite a heightened public risk perception toward COVID-19, malaria testing motivation has been well sustained throughout the pandemic. This may be attributable to proactive program planning and data monitoring and active engagement with the communities and the national authorities to circumvent the indirect effect of COVID-19 on intervention coverage in Cambodia during the pandemic.

Evaluation of three rapid tests for diagnosis of P. falciparum and P. vivax malaria in Colombia.

The diagnostic capacity of three malaria rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs), NOW-Malaria-ICT, OptiMAL-IT, and Paracheck-Pf, was evaluated against expert microscopy in Colombia. We tested 896 patients, of whom microscopy confirmed 139 P. falciparum, 279 P. vivax, and 13 mixed P.f/P.v infections and 465 negatives. Paracheck-Pf and NOW-malaria-ICT were more accurate in detecting P. falciparum (sensitivities 90.8% and 90.1%, respectively) in comparison with Optimal-IT (83.6%). NOW showed an acceptable Pf detection rate at low densities (< 500/microL), but resulted in a higher proportion of false positives. For P. vivax diagnosis, Optimal-IT had a higher sensitivity than NOW (91.0% and 81.4%, respectively). The choice between the two Pf/Pv detecting RDTs balances P. falciparum and P. vivax detection rates. Considering some degree of P. falciparum overtreatment and failure to detect all P. vivax cases as more acceptable than missing some cases of P. falciparum, we recommend careful implementation of NOW-malaria-ICT in areas where microscopy is lacking. The price is however still a constraint.