MPs new move to eliminate Malaria
Dodoma. Tanzania Parliamentarians Against Malaria (Tapama) on Wednesday commenced a major initiative to enhance political will and support legislators engagement to eliminate malaria come 2030.
The project will strengthen political engagement, data-driven accountability and action at the constituency and national level. The project is set to broaden Tapama, an all parties parliamentary group, against malaria’s role and support institutionalisation of accountability and action through an enhanced malaria scorecard, which uses existing routinely collected data from the District Health Information Systems.
There has been significant progress in reducing the burden of malaria with prevalence dropping drastically from 14.4 per cent in 2016 to 7.3 per cent by 2018, thanks to the coordinated action by the National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP).
“To avoid back-tracking and accelerate the response we need increased action, more resources, increased partnerships, multisectoral action and greater accountability. As parliamentarians we have a greater role in supporting this vision towards achieving the goal of zero malaria by 2030” said Ms Riziki Lulida, the Tapama chairperson.
The project will support the development of a malaria scorecard app for smartphones and tablets. The initiative will also see the development malaria advocacy and communication strategy and provide guidelines for parliamentarians on key actions.
Under the initiative, parliamentarians will be trained on using the scorecard tools. Routine scorecard review meetings to drive accelerated action will be conducted in four high malaria burden regions (Kigoma, Geita, Kagera, Lindi/Mtwara).
Tapama will further engage in regional advocacy including playing a major role in the Sadc Malaria Day event in November 2019. Parliamentarians can play a major role at the constituency level in advocating for service provision and enhancing participation through sharing information, role modelling, intervening with traditional structures and service providers at constituency level and spearheading oversight and accountability for malaria.
At the national level parliamentarians can support the malaria agenda through expenditure tracking, creating a conducive policy environment, effectively advocating for an effective response as well as promoting accountability for results, sufficient resources and transparency of decisions and resource use.
Tapama is working closely with the national malaria control programme and the African Leaders Malaria Alliance.
This eighteen-month project in Tanzania is being financed by Comic Relief GSK Partnership (UK), a UK based Organization.
