Preventive Interventions for Malaria amongst Children in Africa

Abstract

The epidemiology of malaria among children in Africa has significantly changed over the past decade. However, the number of children in Africa affected by malaria is significant in both urban and rural areas. Considering the availability of evidence to minimise the spread of malaria, critical evaluation of these evidences is lacking. The mixed methods based systematic review with a narrative synthesis identified and evaluated the evidence based intervention practices that are effective in preventing malaria infections among children in African countries. Data extracted from mixed methods surveys illuminated aspects of implementation that may impact uptake of these evidence based interventions. The role of intervention strategies to be implemented at national level, community level and individual level was found in this review to be key in helping prevent malaria infections among children. This makes it clear that government and local community, parents/caregivers of children play an important role in implementing the intervention practices, for instance through consistent usage of insecticide-treated mosquito nets to prevent malaria infections among children. Further evaluation also revealed that there is not ‘one best intervention’ that can be applied to all regions in Africa. Instead, there is need for the African government to select the intervention practices based on incidence level of malaria among children in a specific region, as this was found to be of importance to prevent malaria at a consistent level.