How Surveillance Systems Can Adapt to Fight Covid-19 and Malaria

Since March 2020 when the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic, governments and organisations involved in the prevention and control of malaria have had to divert their attention from the diagnosis, control and prevention of malaria, to that of COVID-19, or leverage the existing surveillance systems to fight both, as effectively as possible. To support surveillance practices, Malaria Consortium has contributed to published guidelines designed to support malaria surveillance monitoring and evaluation during the Covid-19 pandemic. This piece of work was undertaken by the RBM Monitoring and Evaluation Research Group (MERG) in joint partnership with the WHO workstreams and multiple partner efforts, in response to faltering surveillance due to COVID-19 restrictions imposed in a number of countries. "Strong surveillance is the foundation for robust health systems. The COVID-19 pandemic brings with it risks of a diversion of resources and a drop in surveillance for other diseases like malaria. It is critical, at this time, to listen to a breadth of perspectives from different countries to reflect on our experience and lessons learnt. Collectively we'll be able to better identify priorities, document best practice and identify optimal approaches that address both new and existing surveillance challenges." Arantxa Roca-Feltrer, Head of Surveillance, Monitoring and Evaluation at Malaria Consortium and RBM Monitoring and Evaluation Research Group co-chair.