Background
Since its inception in 2005, the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) has played a major role in the reductions in malaria morbidity and mortality witnessed across Africa. With the status of PMI funding and operations currently uncertain, this study aimed to quantify the impact that a fully-functioning PMI would have on malaria cases and deaths in Africa during 2025.
Methods
We combined detailed spatio-temporal information on planned 2025 PMI and non-PMI malaria commodity procurement and distribution in Africa with spatio-temporal Bayesian models of intervention coverage and Plasmodium falciparum transmission and burden in Africa. By comparing coverage scenarios with and without planned PMI contributions we estimated the number of malaria cases and deaths PMI would avert in 2025.
Findings
We estimated that business-as-usual PMI contributions to vector control, seasonal chemoprevention, and routine malaria treatment in Africa would avert in 2025 14·9M (95% uncertainty interval 12·5M – 17·8M) malaria cases and 107,000 (71,000 – 166,000) deaths. This represents 12·6% (11·1 – 14·2%) and 39·0% (37·1 – 40·4%), respectively, of the total burden of malaria morbidity and mortality in PMI’s focus geographies across 27 African countries. These estimates do not account for the additional impact of PMI-supported provision of diagnostics or severe case management commodities, nor preventive treatment for pregnant women which would add further to the averted burden.
Interpretation
PMI investment in supporting procurement and distribution of malaria control commodities would translate directly into millions of malaria cases averted and a hundred thousand lives saved across its focus geographies in Africa across 2025.
medRxiv preprint: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.02.28.25323072