APLMA Leaders Dashboard

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Introduction

A critical part of the Asia Pacific Leaders’ Malaria Elimination Roadmap (the Roadmap), endorsed by the Asia Pacific Heads of Government in 2015 as a plan to achieve the goal of an Asia Pacific free of malaria by 2030, was the decision to develop a mechanism to track progress and achievements in malaria control and elimination across Asia and the Pacific.

The APLMA Leaders’ Dashboard (the Dashboard) is the mechanism to help countries track progress towards the 2030 goal. It highlights bottlenecks, encourages prompt action, serves as a key advocacy tool to demonstrate progress in the region, and leverages Governments’ and partners continued support for financing malaria elimination.

The Dashboard was first published in 2017 and annually since then.

How it works

The Dashboard consists of two parts, the Leaders Dashboard and a Technical Annex.

Leaders Dashboard

The Leaders’ Dashboard (aimed at leaders and senior officials) consists of:

  • basic indicators to track the disease taken from the WHO World Malaria Report and designed to give a simple snapshot of the current malaria situation in each of our counties, and collectively as a region
  • key policy milestones directly related to the roadmap priority areas that are color-coded according to the countries’ own plans:
    • Green: countries that have already reached or exceeded the milestone
    • Yellow: countries that are in the process of moving towards the milestone according to the countries’ planned implementation date

The policy milestones were developed in consultation with countries in 2016 and will be revised over time as progress is achieved. Milestones will require greater specificity as we get closer to the 2030 goal and countries implement each of the agreed actions.

Technical Annex

The Technical Annex to the Dashboard (aimed at a more technical audience such as national program managers) offers a more detailed breakdown of technical parameters and epidemiology of malaria elimination in each country, based on the WHO World Malaria Report and data from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GF).

Role of the secretariats

The APLMA and APMEN Secretariats work closely with countries and partners, including the WHO and the GF, to implement the Dashboard process. This includes the revision and refinement of the proposed milestones, and making sure these are technically sound, aligned with the latest guidance from WHO, achievable and directly linked to the Roadmap. The milestone data will be updated annually and the APLMA Senior Officials Meeting (SOM) will continue to provide an official forum for countries to review progress of the Dashboard milestones.

Impact

The APLMA Leaders’ Dashboard was key in developing the 5 Year Review of Progress since the launch of the Roadmap, it was an opportunity to review progress against each policy milestone since the initial commitment to eliminating malaria by 2030 in the region.

Achieving milestones

The Leaders’ Dashboard is updated and launched yearly, usually during the Asia Pacific Malaria Week and its APLMA Senior Officials Meeting (SOM) when a focused session is held to highlight key achievements and successes from the region along the 6 policy roadmap milestones. Since the launch of the Dashboard, seven countries in Asia Pacific (China, Democratic Republic of Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Republic of Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand) have achieved all the policy milestones of the Leaders’ Dashboard, two of which are already certified malaria free by the WHO (China, Malaysia). The Leaders’ Dashboard also highlights remaining gaps that senior policy makers can address as a matter of priority over the next year, to drive progress towards elimination.

Multisectoral taskforces

Several countries have achieved one or more of the policy milestones and several others are taking steps to introduce, implement and operationalize these policies. The role of multisectoral national level task forces was a key topic discussed during SOM 2019, hosted by Thailand. In June 2019, the Myanmar cabinet established the multisectoral National Malaria Elimination Task Force to drive national malaria elimination efforts. Vanuatu formed its National Malaria Elimination Advisory Group in the following year. Three other countries- Bangladesh, Lao PDR and Timor Leste and have made progress towards formation of a malaria elimination task force and are expected to formally establish it by the end of 2021.

Making malaria a national notifiable disease

One of the policy milestones of the Dashboard highlights how making malaria notifiable is critical for strengthening health systems and improving regional health security. This was also a key topic addressed during Malaria Week in 2019 as a pre-requisite to stronger sustained surveillance in elimination settings. By November 2019, the Ministry of Health of Lao PDR, authorized malaria as one of national notifiable diseases, applicable across all provinces. The government updated the notifiable disease database using the District Health Information System or DHIS2. In 2020, Cambodia also made malaria a notifiable disease where all cases, including P. Falciparum and P. Vivax cases, now have to be reported within 24 hours.

Engaging the private sector

Engaging the private health sector in malaria surveillance is essential for reducing malaria transmission, especially in elimination settings. During the 2019 SOM, APLMA shared a case study on how countries have been engaging the private healthcare sector for case reporting. Timor Leste has since implemented malaria case reporting from all health facilities- 1 National Hospital, 5 Referral Hospital, 67 Community Health Centre, 143 Health Post, 32 Community Health Volunteers and 35 Private sector entities routinely report case data to the National Malaria Programme. In 2018, the national program in Afghanistan developed a mechanism for private sector case reporting and piloted in eastern provinces of country. Since then, the data collection mechanism has been expanded all over the country.

Updating Malaria National Strategic Plans

Several countries have updated and adapted their costed national strategic plans for malaria elimination. Pakistan has developed and finalised their National Strategic Plan and it will be launched in August 2021. Timor Leste has included a cost plan as part of its recently revised national elimination strategy, as reported in the latest Dashboard 2020 (PDF).

Key success factors

  • Specially developed for senior leaders to improve accountability and track progress towards the commitments made by the leaders as outlined in the Roadmap.
  • Key policy milestones aligned with the Roadmap and color-coded according to the countries’ own elimination plans.
  • Uses technical indicators from internationally published but up to date data
  • Provides a mechanism for the countries to share experiences and best practice for each milestone via the online Dashboard

Accessing the Dashboard

An interactive version of the Dashboard, allowing users to navigate the data by indicators and countries, is available online at dashboard.aplma.org and as a PDF version.

References