Sweden-Melanesia collaborative research network to end malaria for good

Widespread adoption of effective malaria control tools over the last two decades has reduced the global malaria disease burden and ending malaria by 2030 was adopted as a target of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015.

However, progress has slowed since then and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted crucial malaria control services, making the SDG target almost impossible to achieve. Malaria caused by Plasmodium vivax represents a major obstacle to elimination outside sub-Saharan Africa.

In the South Pacific, malaria is endemic in three island nations: Papua New Guinea (PNG), Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu with drastically varying burden among countries and within each country.

Across the region, malaria resurgence and growing proportions of cases caused by P. vivax call for research on new tools and strategies to supplement current intervention packages designed for P. falciparum control and elimination.

In this proposed collaboration among Sweden, PNG, and Vanuatu, using an interdisciplinary approach, we aim to build a research network to identify and address remaining obstacles to malaria elimination such as community engagement, P. vivax recurrent infections, asymptomatic and sub-microscopic infections, and vulnerability to malaria resurgence.

Through this partnership we seek to design and implement evidence-based elimination strategies that can be rolled out for different epidemiological settings across the region to achieve malaria elimination.