Malaria Control and Elimination in Africa

Dear Colleagues,

These last two decades, improvement in malaria control and elimination has reduced the global malaria burden; however, progress has stalled in the past 5 years. In 2021, 82% of malaria cases were detected in Africa, where 95% of the 619,000 people who died of malaria lived. While specific epidemiological pattern characterization within countries is often lacking, limiting the design of tailored control or elimination strategies, access to appropriate existing tools for case management and preventive strategies is not optimal in several settings. Intensive interventions such as proactive and passive case detection, use of appropriate diagnostic tools in the era of pre-elimination, community-based detection, intensified surveillance taking into account the borders and mobile populations, vector control, AND high rate of distribution and coverage of prevention are mandatory to achieve the GTS 2025 and 2030 morbidity and mortality targets. The contribution of molecular surveillance of parasite spread and evolution, including tools such as next-generation sequencing for the identification of new strains, is also suggested to provide critical information for real-time policy and decision making to support elimination.

Several known, unknown, and emerging factors constitute threats and obstacles for malaria control and elimination efforts, e.g., persistent high burden in some regions, asymptomatic and residual malaria, spread of drug and insecticide resistance, reduced test sensitivity due to hrp2/3 deletion, health worker adhesion to the test and treat strategy, especially in the context of emerging and remerging pathogens, implication of the community, health crisis, urban and forest malaria, and the possible effect of climate change.

We invite original research and review articles reporting control and elimination aspects and challenges in Africa. Topics include but are not limited to:

• Malaria epidemiology and transmission patterns—including specific population groups, specific country context, genomic epidemiology, asymptomatic and residual malaria;
• Resistance and malaria control;
• One health approach and malaria: emerging malaria; malaria and emerging and re-emerging pathogens; malaria and non-malarial febrile illness;
• Elimination and pre-elimination challenges;
• Challenges for case detection case management and prevention

Prof. Dr. Marielle Karine Bouyou-Akotet
Guest Editor

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