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Updated guidelines on treatment of malaria in South Africa

The National Department of Health and the South African Malaria Elimination Committee (SAMEC) have completed the updating and revision of the South African Malaria Treatment Guidelines.

These are available on the NICD website at www.nicd.ac.za under the ‘Diseases A-Z’ tab.

These guidelines are based on the 2015 World Health Organisation’s Guidelines for the treatment of malaria.

Factors that were considered in the choice of therapeutic options included effectiveness, safety, and impact on malaria transmission and on the emergence and spread of antimalarial drug resistance.

While malaria is endemic to three of South Africa’s nine provinces, local transmission is restricted to the low-altitude border regions of Limpopo, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal provinces. Presently the majority of malaria cases are imported.

South Africa committed itself to halt local malaria transmission within its borders by 2018. Elimination strategy objectives are to strengthen passive and active surveillance, improve capacity to coordinate and implement malaria interventions, appropriately
educate the population about malaria, and reduce the human malaria parasite reservoir.

The mainstay of malaria control continues to be indoor residual insecticide spraying to substantially reduce the density of mosquito vectors in transmission areas, while limited larviciding is done in selected places. In the current malaria season there will be increased scrutiny of identified foci of transmission in endemic provinces, characterised by active case finding using sensitive molecular methods to detect sub-microscopic parasite carriers, and intensified vector surveillance and control.

The guidelines on the treatment of malaria in South Africa that aim to facilitate effective, appropriate and timeous treatment of malaria, thereby reducing the burden of this disease in our communities. This is essential to further bring down the malaria case fatality rates currently recorded in South Africa, to decrease malaria transmission and to limit resistance to antimalarial drugs.

[link url="http://www.nicd.ac.za/assets/files/Guidelines%20-%20MalariaTreatment%202016%20-Final%20Draft%2005%20December%202016.pdf"]Download NICD guidelines[/link]

 

Image from National Institute for Communicable Diseases

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