Measuring Malaria through Household Surveys

Malaria poses a tremendous public health threat across the globe: An estimated 3.3 billion people, or 40 percent of the world’s population, live in areas of malaria risk. The investments made in insecticide-treated net (ITN) distribution, indoor residual spraying (IRS), malaria in pregnancy, and prompt diagnosis and treatment of malaria infections have made significant gains, yet many challenges remain. Among these challenges is the question of how to best measure the fight against malaria.

Nationally representative, population-based household surveys are a principal measurement tool to collect data for measuring outcome and impact indicators for malaria programs and interventions. Household surveys are especially relevant in many endemic settings for measuring coverage of interventions that primarily target the household level, such as ITN distributions, and for understanding patterns of intermittent preventive treatment (IPTp) among pregnant women and diagnostic testing and antimalarial use among children with fever.

This course provides an overview of the malaria indicators collected through household surveys, permitting learners to understand the data collection, calculation, and interpretation of key malaria indicators.