Modelling support to decision-making for malaria control in Benin

Benin is a pioneer in the fight against infectious diseases, with an integrated approach to eliminate HIV, tuberculosis and malaria and using digital tools to support the planning and implementation of interventions (Rock Aïkpon et al. 2020).

The Analytics and Intervention Modelling group (AIM) has been providing support to the National Malaria Control Program (NMCP) since 2018. The NMCP is currently updating its National Strategic Plan (NSP) for the period 2024-2026. This plan will guide the strategy and tools for malaria control in Benin and form the base for the funding request to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tubercolosis and Malaria in spring 2023. We provide model-based evidence to show the impact the NSP will likely have and help allocating interventions to maximise impact. The process is briefly summarised below.

• We collate epidemiological data of the country and interact with the NMCP to gather a deeper understanding of the past malaria burden and control efforts.
• We then calibrate OpenMalaria, the malaria transmission simulation platform developed in-house, to quantify the transmission risk and intensity in each region of Benin.
• The NMCP shares which interventions have already been allocated for the 2024-2026 NSP, such as bed nets and perennial chemoprevention, and what is still being considered. The Benin NMCP wants to determine what is more impactful between administering seasonal malaria chemoprevention to children until 10 in few regions or until 5 in a larger area.
• We use again OpenMalaria to project the impact of the interventions on prevalence, incidence and severe cases. We provide quantitative evidence to guide the decision on Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention (SMC) allocation.

Strong engagement with the NMCP is essential to drive the defining of objectives, sharing of data and definition of the scenarios. This is possible thanks to in-country partners such as local staff of the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI). In-person meetings in-country with all stakeholders are extremely useful and productive.

 The process described above is similar to the one we apply to support NMCPs in other countries such as Mozambique.

Involved Regions: Africa
Involved Countries: Benin

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