Effectiveness of Malaria Camps as Part of the Odisha State Malaria Elimination Drive
Condition: Malaria
MeSH terms: Malaria
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      The Odisha State Malaria Control Program (India) has introduced 'malaria camps' where teams
      of health workers visit villages to educate the population, enhance vector control with
      long-lasting insecticide nets (LLINs) and indoor residual spraying (IRS), and perform
      village-wide screening with rapid diagnostic tests and treatment for malaria. The long-term
      goal of this project is to evaluate the effectiveness of malaria camps (MCs) by determining
      if they reduce malaria, and to characterize malaria transmission in MCs.
    

Detailed description: 
      The persistently high malaria burden in the remote forested areas of Odisha, India has led to
      the introduction of 'malaria camps' by the Odisha State Malaria Control Program where teams
      of health workers visit villages to educate the population, enhance vector control with
      long-lasting insecticide nets (LLINs) and indoor residual spraying (IRS), and perform
      village-wide screening with rapid diagnostic tests and treatment for malaria. The camps
      appear to be very effective but this is hard to assess in the context of ongoing changes such
      as LLIN introduction. The long-term goal of this project is to evaluate the effectiveness of
      malaria camps (MCs) by determining if they reduce malaria, and to characterize malaria
      transmission in MCs. The major objective to achieve this is through a quasi-experimental
      study (i.e., pretest-post-test control group design) of the effectiveness of the
      intervention, to determine if MCs reduce the prevalence of clinical and asymptomatic malaria
      as detected by PCR. In the first year, villages will be assigned across three study arms: arm
      1 to receive new MCs; arm 2 is a control with no MCs but with standard malaria control; and
      arm 3 consists of villages already in receipt of MCs to study longer term effects. In the
      second year, both arm 1 and arm 2 villages will receive the intervention (i.e., a
      non-randomized stepped-wedge design). MC effectiveness will be evaluated from epidemiologic
      surveys and PCR detection of malaria prevalence with and without MCs.
    

Intervention name(s): Malaria Camps
Intervention type(s): Other
Intervention description(s): The Govt. of India Malaria Control Programme (MCP) of Odisha provides ITNs and IRS, and trains community health workers (ASHAs) on the diagnosis and treatment of malaria, providing them with antimalarial drugs so that malaria treatment is available even in remote villages. Faced with a persistent burden of malaria in forest villages, the MCP recently introduced malaria camps (MCs) combining focused screening and treatment in villages with intensified vector control. The program includes one round of testing and treatment for the whole village population before the monsoon season, followed by one round of screening and treating of fever cases only during the monsoon season.
Allocation: Non-Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Intervention model description: Quasi-experimental cluster-assigned stepped-wedge study
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary purpose: Other