Interview

Ricardo Fernandez, Head of Mission in Chad

Seasonal malaria chemoprevention, the SMC, is a campaign that is being carried out among the population under 5 years old in order to prevent severe cases of malaria in hyper endemic areas, as it's the case in Moïssala.


In 2019, 1 million people contracted malaria in Chad, 2,000 died from it.
We're talking about positivity rate.


Positivity rate: percentage of positive tests carried out on children received in consultation
During the rainy period, this rate is around 86%.
The main difficulties of SMC during the Covid context : protecting staff. It's our first priority.
It drives material, a supply chain, which is a bit difficult at the moment.





Another major difficulty, purely operational: the risk-benefit, being a vector for the spread of Covid versus tolerating mortality rates we know will happen if we don't prevent the severity of the disease in this region.


It's obvious that the Covid case fatality rate in general is around 10%, while malaria will kill many children under 5 in this population.


In July, around 140,000 children were targeted in the first round of the SPC in Moïssala, Chad.