Prevention, Treatment and Malaria Control: A Southern America Perspective

Malaria is one of the diseases with the highest morbi-mortality rate worldwide, including Colombia, where it is endemic in several regions of the country. Although the incidence of this disease in the Department of Meta and the Atlantic Coast is not as high as in Nariño, the number of reported cases has held steady over time. It is still an event of great interest in public health. The struggle against malaria is part of one of the Millennium Development Goals and has generated global and national programs that have been implemented at a national and global level, whose main goal is to control and eradicate malaria. These programs have stood out for their vertical nature and for the low level of community participation. Health sector needs to include, at a micro-level, the voices of the community represented in their discourses and actions in the face of the disease, its prevention, and treatment. Therefore, a community and institutional look at these elements, in relation to the disease and the vector, should be provided, which will allow the vector and disease control programs to be improved, designing strategies to bring community and government agencies together to propose public health policies and programs.