SEMA ReACT at the 8th Multilateral Initiative on Malaria (MIM)
The 8th Pan-African Malaria Conference known as the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria (MIM), took place in Kigali, Rwanda, from 21–27 April 2024. The conference brought together researchers, policy makers and innovators to assess the current state of malaria in Africa, share their latest findings, and discuss the challenges and strategies for malaria control across the continent.
SEMA ReACT partners from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Tanzania, Zambia, Belgium and Switzerland met face-to-face on the sidelines of the conference for their Annual Consortium meeting.
SEMA ReACT Poster
Under the theme of treatment and community case management, Deborah Bora Kanyamukenge, Lecturer at the Department of Sociology at Lubumbashi University presented a poster entitled, ‘Young Children with Severe Malaria in Remote Areas of the DRC: A Contextual Analysis of the Perceptions, Attitudes, and Health-Seeking Behaviors of Their Parents’. The poster showcased preliminary results from 30 focus group discussions and a cluster survey of 905 households from 30 different villages. The findings emphasized the vital importance of targeted education covering both the need to refer a severely ill child to a facility where they can receive injectable artesunate, and the role of pre-referral rectal artesunate capsules (RAS). The findings also underscored the critical importance of active community involvement for the success of deploying RAS through Community Health Workers to reduce child mortality.