Collaborating to tackle malaria

In 2016, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) began supporting the National Malaria Program in Bolívar, in collaboration with Venezuela’s Ministry of Health. Since then, we have also started supporting various diagnostic points throughout the state and helping to treat malaria patients. A year ago, MSF also began working with the Malaria Institute in Carúpano, Sucre state, increasing its capacity to fight the disease.

“In Bolívar, we also help with what we call vector control,” explains MSF health promoter Josué Nonato. “[We] fumigate houses and distribute mosquito nets to the population, to diminish the risk of infection. And my job, as a health promoter, is to explain to people how to identify the symptoms of malaria and what to do when they start to feel sick, to make sure they can be treated before the disease gets too severe.”

Health promoters like Nonato are part of MSF’s strategy to reach the people most at risk of contracting malaria in the region. That’s why most of the diagnostic and treatment points we supervise are near the gold mines.

In 2019, MSF reached more than 55,000 people through health promotion sessions in the area. We also treated more than 85,000 people for malaria, distributed over 65,000 mosquito nets, sprayed 530 households with insecticide, and helped carry out more than 250,000 tests for malaria. Since then, the number of cases in Sifontes municipality has decreased by around 40 percent.

“We went from sometimes up to 200 people queuing in front of the diagnostic points and many people who were infected with malaria who had to go directly to the [outpatient clinic] because there was no treatment available to a situation [that is] a bit more manageable now,” says MSF bioanalyst Monserrat Barrios, who is in charge of training new microscope technicians at diagnostic points.