Intermittent Preventive Treatment for African Children: Where and how should IPT be applied?

• Research unit: TPH
• Project number: 6.13

Key words (English)

Malaria Plasmodium Epidemiology Model Stochastic Simulation

Short description (English)

Intermittent Preventive Treatment (IPT) in infants may be a useful addition to malaria control strategies in settings where intense, perennial malaria transmission results in infants bearing the brunt of malaria disease and death. A series of studies will document the efficacy of IPT in a number of countries, including one setting with markedly seasonal transmission where the burden of malaria falls on older children. The results of these studies will help to form a rational basis for IPT policy recommendations in the countries where IPT is evaluated. However, it will also be necessary to determine whether IPT is appropriate in the many countries where IPT studies will not have been conducted. This will depend largely on an appreciation of the age pattern of malaria disease and death, and the level of seasonality of malaria transmission, in those countries, in addition to the estimates of efficacy of IPT in such settings.

Project aims (English)

This project aims to determine in which African settings IPT is likely to be most useful.

Abstract (English)

To date there is no overview of the age pattern of malaria disease and death in sub-Saharan Africa. We will abstract, collate, summarise and extrapolate existing data to produce an overview of the age pattern and seasonality of malaria disease and death across sub-Saharan Africa. We will develop mathematical models that will relate these age patterns to measures of transmission intensity and predict the impact of IPT under different conditions. We will produce an algorithm to identify the most appropriate settings for implementation of IPT, with a view to guiding IPTi-related policy discussions.