The MEI announces new leadership, strategy and toolkit updates, and a strengthened partnership model to accelerate malaria elimination efforts
During the last 14 years, the Malaria Elimination Initiative (MEI) at the UCSF Institute of Global Health Sciences has pushed the boundaries of what was believed to be possible in malaria elimination. Today, the MEI is doubling down on this vision by sharing strategy updates, releasing an elimination toolkit, and announcing new leadership that is committed to tackling the next frontier of the malaria fight.
As more countries achieve elimination and as new evidence has emerged that global eradication is ambitious, achievable, and necessary within a generation, consensus that eradication is possible–and that health emergencies, including pandemics like COVID-19, should not deter us—is rapidly shifting how donors, policymakers, and, most importantly, countries are tackling malaria. Since 2000, more than 20 countries have eliminated malaria—an incredible accomplishment representing the only WHO Global Technical Strategy milestone achieved thus far. Eliminating countries have led the way in deploying nuanced and targeted malaria approaches that all malaria endemic countries can adopt, particularly as the world sets its sight on eradication.
As part of an updated organizational strategy, the MEI will expand its reach and partnerships and bring proven elimination approaches and tools to higher burden countries with heterogeneous transmission. In collaboration with partners, the MEI will drive population-level impact by scaling up evidence-based solutions and supporting integrated planning and response, particularly at the subnational level, while also maintaining a strong malaria research portfolio based on the most pressing questions that face malaria programs today.
The MEI has and will continue to work in service of, and in direct collaboration with, national malaria programs. The MEI’s new leadership and evolving strategy recognizes the critical importance of localizing malaria research and practice and is further expanding its partnership-based approach. The engagement of local expertise, skills and knowledge exchange, and technical assistance that is grounded in long-term capacity building with the aim of training the next generation of health professionals is core to the MEI’s partnership approach. The MEI is committed to examining our practices and breaking down structural barriers that exist in global health research and practice. Working together, we can achieve our collective goal of a world free from malaria.
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