Africa: Unitaid Invests U.S.$36 Million to Support Evidence-Based Scale-Up of Innovative Malaria Prevention Tools

A health worker prepares an RTS,S malaria vaccine during pilot rollout in Ghana in 2019.

New programs will generate evidence alongside the first large-scale deployments of spatial emanators to inform practical guidance and decisions supporting scale-up, while evaluating the effectiveness of insecticide-treated baby wraps.

As countries prepare to introduce spatial emanators, a new generation of malaria prevention tool, Unitaid is investing US$36 million in two complementary projects to generate the evidence needed to guide their effective and sustainable rollout. The projects will support implementation research as spatial emanators move to scale following the announcement by the United States Government, the Global Fund and SC Johnson that they aim to reach at least 60 million people across priority countries with the product by 2029.

Spatial emanators are devices that release insecticide into the air, reducing mosquito entry, biting and feeding, and providing continuous protection to indoor areas, providing they are installed properly and replaced as needed. Evidence from a Unitaid-funded trial in Kenya demonstrated a 32% reduction in new malaria infections and contributed to the WHO's conditional recommendation in August 2025 for the use of spatial emanators alongside insecticide-treated nets.

Two Unitaid-funded projects, led by Swiss TPH and the Centre for Research in Infectious Diseases in Cameroon (CRID), will generate real-world evidence to determine the most cost-effective, high-impact use of spatial emanators across different transmission settings, mosquito species and population groups, and inform evolving WHO guidance. This includes evidence on their use in areas with low coverage of insecticide-treated mosquito nets and in urban settings, where malaria control efforts meet unique challenges, working closely with community and civil society organizations.

Both projects will also generate early evidence on the potential role of spatial emanators to protect against Aedes mosquitoes, which transmit dengue and other mosquito- borne diseases. The dengue burden is spreading in Sub-Saharan Africa, with infections growing nine-fold between 2019 and 2023.

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