The Roll Back Malaria Partnership (RBM) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) launched last month the “Multisectoral Action Framework for Malaria,” a plan that calls for greater coordinated action among different development sectors to fight malaria.

The plan examines the social and economic determinants of malaria and sets out a roadmap for a more integrated response across the public sector, the private and commercial sector and civil society. It stresses the importance of integrating malaria control into the broader context of socio-economic development.

The report was released alongside the UN General Assembly on September 24th. It received input from more than 70 experts from a variety of organizations including GBCHealth members Sumitomo Chemical and Bayer and partners such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the Southern African Development Committee (SADC) Secretariat.

The framework has great relevance to ongoing malaria prevention and control efforts led by the CAMA (Corporate Alliance for Malaria in Africa) program, which GBCHealth coordinates, and by GBCHealth member companies. “It encompasses many of the initiatives that GBCHealth and CAMA members have been advancing in workplace and community programs,” said Michael Macdonald, co-chair of the Vector Control Working Group, RBM. “As the framework evolves, it will provide GBCHealth and CAMA members with greater opportunities for collaboration through a variety of sectors.”

The framework stresses that all sectors be “malaria smart” by ensuring that all operations contribute to reducing malaria.  For the private sector, this includes indentifying malaria-producing activities, implementing procedures, programs and policies that reduce malaria among employees and their families and advancing socio-economic development.

This is a concept that GBCHealth and CAMA fully support. Earlier this month at the  CAMA/RBM workshop, “Private Sector Opportunities in IRS and Malaria Control in West Africa,” held in Accra, Ghana, representatives from the mining companies AngloGold Ashanti, Chirano Gold Mines and Rio Tinto presented the business case for malaria control while government representatives stressed the importance of engaging the private sector in National Malaria Control Programs (NMCPs).

“GBCHealth has been involved in and has pioneered many of these actions and lessons-learned presented in the framework,” Macdonald said. “We look forward to a strong and fruitful collaboration in the future.”

Read the framework.