Malaria No More, a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) in partnership with the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) & Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) established an India Interagency Expert Committee on Malaria and Climate (IEC) to explore and advance climate-based solutions for accelerating malaria elimination in India.
- India has set a target to eliminate Malaria by 2030. It is making steady progress to achieve it.
- Malaria & other mosquito-borne diseases are highly influenced by weather and weather events. IEC aims to use weather data and malaria data to aid Malaria controlling interventions, as it is a cost effective method.
- 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 mosquito-borne diseases.
Role of the Committee
i.For the 1st time, The committee brings together leading experts and researchers from health, climate and technology fields to define and operationalise climate-based malaria prediction tools to help India progress towards the 2030 goal.
- Combining weather & malaria data can help in identifying micro-trends and predict malaria patterns.
ii.The committee will co-design the most feasible and useful applications of climate-based forecasting of diseases like Malaria.
iii.IEC will focus on improving models like the one ‘Malaria No More’ developed in Odisha, which is being tested on a pilot basis in Koraput and Malkangiri districts of Odisha.
- It uses weather data, health information, and deep learning algorithms for practical visualisation outputs, which will aid decision making.
Recent Related News:
December 8, 2020. According to the World Malaria Report 2020 released by the World Health Organization (WHO), India became the only highly endemic country to report a decline of 17.6 % in 2019 compared to 2018.
About Indian Meteorological Department (IMD)
Director-General – Dr. Mrutyunjay Mohapatra
Headquarters – New Delhi, Delhi
About Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)
Director General – Balram Bhargava
Headquarters – New Delhi
About Malaria No More
CEO – Martin Edlund
Headquarters – Seattle, USA
