Climate-informed early warning systems are tools for adaption, prediction, and precision programming. With the increasing threat of climate change on health outcomes, the damage to human health – malaria, malnutrition, food shortages, poverty, heat stress, and health service disruptions – will likely exceed WHO’s prediction of 250,000 additional deaths per year annually between 2030 and 2050. Adaptive and proactive measures are necessary to plan for effective responses to these impending epidemics.
The Institute for Malaria and Climate Solutions aims to accelerate progress towards malaria elimination by advancing increasingly sophisticated early warning systems to support precision programming and outbreak prevention. By design, malaria early warning systems (MEWS) indicators measure the vulnerability of a population to malaria infection, the risk of transmission due to climatic and environmental factors, and the risk of outbreaks and epidemics. By measuring these indicators, MEWS can support planning and implementation of proactive interventions to prevent outbreaks and detect an outbreak at an early stage, thereby preventing epidemics through early response. Additionally, MEWS can help evaluate the adequacy and effectiveness of different interventions, resulting in better outbreak prevention and response mechanisms for the future.
Over the past two decades, almost all malaria endemic countries have included outbreak or epidemic prevention and response in their national strategies for malaria control and elimination. The type and scale of MEWS varies widely among malaria endemic countries and depends on the availability of resources (manpower, data, infrastructure, funding), local capacity, governance mechanisms, stakeholder interest, regulatory policies, and political buy-in. With growing sophistication of data and allied technologies, and the increasing gap in access to these technologies among countries, the diversity of the response mechanisms is increasing. Therefore, there is an urgent need to assess the level of country preparedness for malaria outbreak response. By better understanding the local barriers and enablers for using MEWS, and the science and technology needs, action can be taken to (1) bridge the gaps in malaria outbreak response; (2) inform domestic and donor investments in MEWS; and (3) develop systems for implementation.
