SMART II

Context

Malaria remains a major public health challenge in Ghana, particularly in rural areas. Effective malaria medicines are currently available, but rising drug resistance could reverse recent gains. Malaria transmission is also changing due to climatic and environmental factors. The project responds to the need for strengthened malaria surveillance to detect drug resistance and to better understand ongoing malaria transmission in different regions of Ghana. The goal of SMART II is to support evidence-based planning and targeted malaria elimination strategies in Ghana by tracking treatment effectiveness, detecting emerging resistance, and mapping where transmission is highest across the study districts. To this end, SMART II conducts hospital-based therapeutic efficacy monitoring in children, lab testing for early resistance signals, community surveys to measure symptomatic and asymptomatic infection, mosquito studies to assess transmission and risk and spatio-temporal analyses to identify high-prevalence areas and community-level risk factors. Building on SMART I, SMART II expands to additional regions. It is delivered through a Germany–Ghana partnership: BNITM provides overall coordination and technical support, while KCCR leads the scientific work and local implementation. Ghana’s National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP) ensures results inform policy and practice.

Objective

Improved national malaria elimination strategies in Ghana by integrating SMART data on malaria prevalence, treatment efficacy, and transmission

In Cooperation with

• Kumasi Center for Collaborative Research (KCCR), Kumasi, Ghana