A global and community approach to fight Malaria

CAF, Development Bank of Latin America, signed a strategic alliance with the World Fund and the National Center for the Control of Tropical Diseases(CENCET, for its acronym in Spanish) to boost the national strategy to promote, prevent, and control Malaria in the Dominican Republic, within the framework of the regional initiative EMMIE to eliminate the disease. Radio Marien joins the Alliance as an innovative mechanism complementing public policies, education, and health in rural areas. 

The alliance includes a contribution by CAF of USD 200,000, which highlights the importance of a twin-track action against Malaria. On one hand, CAF and CENCET join the World Fund's bag of resources and the network of international actors; and on the other hand, together with Radio Marien, they visualize the role of the community as a booster of interventions in the health system, making them more efficient and effective. 

This action is aligned with the World Fund's strategy, the country approach, and CENCET's multi-sectorial action to eliminate Malaria in the Dominican Republic, addressing the determinants of social health, and other vector borne diseases. 

"The action agreed upon by CAF with the World Fund, CENCET, and Radio Marien, represents an innovative Alliance of financial resources, knowledge, experience, and local leadership", stated Ana Mercedes Botero, Director of CAF's Social Innovation Initiative. In addition, she stated that, "it allows addressing Malaria from a development dimension, with a comprehensive, coordinated twin-track approach: from the health system and the community". 

Thanks to this alliance, 120 provincial evaluators and supervisors will benefit from the training activities for early diagnosis and treatment of Malaria, as well as 400 doctors and nurses. Through indoor fumigation with residual action insecticides, the residents of 18,000 homes will be directly benefitted, as well as 50 people from the community who will receive training as volunteer fumigators. 

The initiative to Eliminate Malaria in Middle-America and La Española Island (EMMIE, for its acronym in Spanish) seeks to join efforts and catalyze resources to eliminate Malaria in Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. By virtue of the New Financing Model, the World Fund has assigned an initial subsidy of USD 10 million to EMMIE. 

"This alliance is a great step in the implication of the interested parties of the region in the EMMIE initiative, as well as in the long-term sustainability of our programs", commented Silvio Martinelli, Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean. 

"We celebrate this alliance for its great symbolic value in Latin America, and hope it works as a model for future contributions of development banks in other countries. We are stronger working together at a global and regional level". 

La Española, an island shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti, is the last bastion of Malaria in the Caribbean. This disease especially affects people in the productive age; its elimination would contribute to improve economic opportunities and life conditions in the country, including the agricultural industry, as well as tourism, construction, and bi-national trade.