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Historical Experiences on Mass Drug Administration for Malaria Control and Elimination, its Challenges and China's Experience: a Narrative Review

Abstract
After decades of efforts, malaria is still the major public health problem in many countries, especially countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Mass drug administration (MDA) has been one of the interventions used to control malaria. With China, the largest and most populous country in the world, achieving malaria elimination with MDA within its strategy, knowing the history of the use of MDA, its advantages and challenges are the key to better implement MDA as a component of malaria control and elimination strategy. This narrative review focused on the use of MDA from the past to present, the experiences of successful and failed MDA intervention to control malaria, the challenges faced, as well as China's experience in malaria control and elimination. A direct search using key words and phrases was conducted using the web search engines Google and Google Scholar, peer-reviewed journal websites and PubMed database to mainly screen articles on MDA studies with positive and negatives results, including resurgence of malaria after MDA or no impact of MDA at all, WHO guidelines and other MDA-related reports. We also summarized our historical field experiences on MDA in malaria control to provide informed perspective on the challenges of MDA. Following the spirit of searching for innovative strategy to control and eliminate malaria, and based on historical experience, we put forward the potential future outlook of MDA in malaria control and elimination.

More information

Type
Journal Article
Author
Nadia J
Lu F