Health Programs

Malaria Control Program Overview

Who is most vulnerable to contracting malaria?

How is Africa impacted by malaria?

How is the Center's Malaria Control Program unique?

What is the importance of bed net distribution?

By utilizing a village-based health care delivery infrastructure—merging resources, personnel, health education, and treatment for several diseases into one delivery system—isolated communities become healthier.

The Carter Center Malaria Control Program

Each year, malaria kills more than 1 million people, mostly children, with 350-500 million cases reported worldwide. Approximately 90 percent of all cases of malaria—a preventable disease—are in Africa, where one child in 10 dies before the age of five. 

The Carter Center, in partnership with the ministry of health in Ethiopia, is committed to rapidly increasing the numbers of people who live in malarious areas of the country who benefit from the protection of sleeping under long-lasting insecticidal bed nets.  Millions of nets have been distributed. The Center's expert staff also closely monitors the impact of the long-lasting insecticidal bed net intervention on malaria incidence, fever, and associated anemia.

Community-Based Effort
The Carter Center's strength has long been to work at grass roots levels to help make things happen. The Carter Center's Malaria Control Program has used a village-based health care delivery infrastructure to help facilitate the free distribution of long-lasting insecticidal bed nets to all members of at-risk communities.  By filling the gaps and helping to provide LLINs with face-to-face health education on how to use them, the Center's focus is an example of what can be achieved through community-based, collaborative efforts.

The 'Integrated Approach'
The Carter Center's Malaria Control Program not only works in coordination with the existing national malaria control program in Ethiopia, but also within the Center's other existing programs such as trachoma control, river blindness, lymphatic filariasis programs, and in Ethiopia, with the Ethiopia Public Health Training Initiative.  By utilizing a village-based health care delivery infrastructure—merging resources, personnel, health education, and treatment for several diseases into one delivery system—isolated communities become healthier. Thanks to these village-based interventions, in place for more than 15 years in some locations, children have the opportunity to grow up no longer fearing the blindness, disfigurement, and life-sapping fevers that their parents suffered.

Ethiopia
Evidence now shows that the large scaling-up of malaria prevention, testing, and treatment across the entire country in 2006 and 2007 may have reduced the number of cases of the disease. However, without constant attention to malaria prevention activities, the disease's resurgence in endemic areas remains a threat. The Carter Center has been working with the Ethiopia government to improve and sustain the targeting of control efforts.  In addition, the Center has assisted with new guidelines for malaria surveillance and epidemic detection to ensure that outbreaks are dealt with quickly, and the impact on public health minimized.

Read the 2008 Summary:  Carter Center Malaria Control Program (PDF) >

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