Expert committee launched in cooperation with IMD, ICMR to eliminate malaria in India

Malaria No More, a non-governmental organisation, in collaboration with the India Meteorological Department (IMD) and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is creating an India Interagency Expert Committee on Malaria and Climate (IEC) to explore and advance climate-based solutions for accelerating malaria elimination in India.

According to a press release, India has made steady progress towards achieving Prime Minister Narendra Modi's goal of malaria elimination by 2030.

As malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases are highly influenced by weather and weather events, the new committee brings together - for the first time - leading experts and researchers from health, climate and technology fields to define and operationalise sophisticated climate-based malaria prediction tools that will be tailored to the Indian context to further propel progress toward the 2030 goal.

On this occasion, Dr Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, Director General of Meteorology, IMD, Government of India said, "We are excited to identify a new, multidisciplinary application for our high-quality climate data services. Malaria is one of India's most pressing health concerns. By combining meteorological information with the information from the health sector, we can examine micro-trends and predict malaria patterns, and accelerate our national progress towards its elimination. The Interagency Expert Committee announced today will function as a highly effective platform to accomplish this objective."

Commenting on the announcement, Dr Manju Rahi, Scientist and Deputy Director-General of Epidemiology and Communicable Diseases, ICMR, Government of India said, "The impact of climate change has emerged as a major threat to the very existence of the human race. At the Indian Council of Medical Research, we are working to combat climate-sensitive diseases through a concerted national strategic action focused on climate and health. Vector-borne diseases like Malaria are priority targets for action in the health-climate agenda.

"The Interagency Expert Committee announced today brings together some of the leading experts and researchers from the field of health, climate, and technology, and would serve as an effective platform to co-design the most feasible and useful applications of climate-based forecasting of diseases like Malaria in the Indian context."

According to the release, the IEC will focus on improving models like the one 'Malaria No More' developed in Odisha state, which uses a multi-stakeholder and interdisciplinary approach to identify and prioritise areas of scalable and sustainable impact to improve malaria control and prevention.

Malaria No More's weather-based prediction model is designed to produce data-driven solutions to guide planning of national malaria prevention campaigns, test and treatment interventions, advanced positioning of medical products, and the deployment of community health workers, the release said. The forecasting model uses advanced weather data, health information, and deep learning algorithms, and produces practical visualisation outputs for local decision-making in the pilot districts of Koraput and Malkangiri in Odisha.

In response to the news, Dr Kaushik Sarkar, India Country Director (in-charge), Malaria No More, stated, "Combining climate and malaria data with new technologies and sophisticated machine learning models offers new opportunities to time and target proven malaria interventions geographically, for cost-effectiveness and improved control. This expert committee will help ensure feasibility and functionality of data for decision-making to improve India's malaria control and prevention efforts. We also hope the IEC will serve as a model for other high-burden malaria countries to adopt as they identify innovative solutions to accelerate progress against this preventable but deadly disease."

The IEC's launch is part of a global initiative - Forecasting Healthy Futures - to develop weather data-informed strategies and policies to improve health outcomes and accelerate progress against malaria and other deadly mosquito-borne diseases.

(ANI)

Also Read: Coronavirus: States, UTs to get over 96,490 doses of COVID vaccine in next 3 days