Use of hospital cases of uncomplicated malaria to identify malaria hot spots, risk factors and map malaria heterogeneity to guide targeting of malaria control interventions in under-five children in Malawi

Knowing the variation in malaria disease burden and risk within their countries help malaria control programmes to take evidence informed decisions how to make the best use of the available malaria control tools and resources. While academic teams have mainly been modeling and mapping the variation of malaria infection risk based on community level surveys, malaria control programs are interested to get similar maps based on malaria cases that are diagnosed in health facilities, which are reported to the existing national malaria surveillance system. Building on previous work modelling work I propose to assess the use of a DHIS2 linked DHS-tracker to track and map individual cases of uncomplicated malaria at the point of care in health facilities as a simple, routine surveillance option available to national control programmes to determine malaria heterogeneity in areas with declining clinical malaria burden.