Case Studies - Promoting Quality Malaria Medicines through SBCC

In 2015, HC3 partnered with PMI to create the Promoting Quality Malaria Medicines Initiative, a global effort focused on using SBCC to address the dangers posed by SSFFC antimalarial medicines and promote positive behaviors that will protect the public. HC3 developed this I-Kit as a part of this initiative, as a means to provide guidance to local stakeholders and program managers who are interested in designing and implementing targeted SBCC campaigns to respond to their specific malaria medicine issue.

When this initiative began, HC3 conducted a literature review and held a global stakeholder meeting to learn how global and national programs had used SBCC to address SSFFC malaria medicines. The process found very few examples of evidence-based, strategically produced and evaluated SBCC activities upon which to base guidance.

To fill this gap, HC3 worked with national malaria control programs and implementing partners on two demonstration projects in different malaria medicine environments: 1) implementing and evaluating a local SBCC campaign in Akwa Ibom, Nigeria, and 2) creating a national campaign plan in Malawi. Although all three kinds of poor-quality medicines can be found in both countries, Nigeria’s poor-quality antimalarial issue is centered on substandard medicine, and Malawi’s primary antimalarial issue, by contrast, is degraded medicine due to diversion.

HC3 is interested in growing the evidence base on the role of SBCC on this issue and has documented its process and lessons learned in two case studies and a brief.