Tounfafi, a village of 6,000 people, is one of the sites within the Madaoua district where seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) has been implemented in Niger.
The combination of malnutrition and malaria is fatal. Both diseases pose a threat to younger children between June and October. It is a critical period because of the so-called hunger gap in between harvests when child malnutrition increases and because during the rainy season malaria cases are more frequent.
In 2013, MSF and the Ministry of Health jointly implemented seasonal malaria chemoprevention for the first time in Niger - a strategy that consists of administering a full anti-malarial treatment course during the seasonal malaria peak to children between 3 and 59 months of age. During these four months, children take three amodiaquine tablets and one sulfadoxine/pyrimethamine tablet for three days each month.