Staff use hand-held computers to map where to spray insecticide. |
Developing state-of-the-art tools for planning
Indoor residual spraying (IRS)—covering the walls inside homes with insecticide that kills and repels mosquitoes—is one of the most effective interventions against malaria. Zambia has developed state-of-the-art digital mapping tools and methods to streamline national IRS activities. These new approaches have great potential for use in other countries and for a range of malaria prevention and treatment methods.
Zambia’s Ministry of Health, in partnership with MACEPA, has developed new tools and methods in using handheld computers (also called personal digital assistants, or PDAs) and global positioning system (GPS) technologies to digitally map IRS areas. A series of trainings in 2007 taught participants how to use PDAs to map residence locations and conduct interviews at people’s homes, entering data about the number of people living there, house structure and room counts, wall surface type, and availability of mosquito nets. This information is used to make digital mapping tools and data sets that make it quite easy to keep track of which houses need to be sprayed. The information is also useful for estimating the amount of insecticides needed, understanding how many spray personnel are required for implementing IRS, and helping sprayers estimate and schedule their workload.
With these innovative tools and methods, Zambia is making rapid progress in scaling up IRS. In 2007 alone, approximately 658,000 households were sprayed, protecting 3.2 million people. In fact, Zambia has already exceeded its goal of reaching 85 percent coverage with IRS in targeted urban and peri-urban areas in 15 districts. IRS is currently being expanded to 36 districts throughout the country.
MACEPA and Zambia’s pioneering development of these technologies is paving the way for their use in planning for all malaria control and prevention interventions. And through the Learning Community, other African countries are receiving similar training. In the future, household enumeration and mapping will be used to show which interventions are used where, and to plan the types and timing of activities needed to ensure that national coverage rates are consistent with targets.
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Photo: Hana Bilak.