Assessing Kwa-Zulu-Natal’s progress towards malaria elimination and its readiness for sub-national verification

BACKGROUND: The South African province of KwaZulu-Natal is rapidly approaching elimination status for malaria with a steady decline in local cases. With the possibility of achieving elimination in reach, the KZN malaria control programme conducted a critical evaluation of its practices and protocols to identify potential challenges and priorities to achieving elimination. Three fundamental questions were addressed: (1) How close is KZN to malaria elimination; (2) Are all systems required to pursue subnational verification of elimination in place; and (3) What priority interventions must be implemented to reduce local cases to zero? METHODS: Based on the 2017 World Health Organization Framework for Elimination, twenty-eight requirements were identified, from which forty-nine indicators to grade elimination progress were further stratified. Malaria data were extracted from the surveillance system and other programme data sources to calculate each indicator and semi-quantitatively rate performance into one of four categories to assess the provinces elimination preparedness. RESULTS: Across the key components a number of gaps were elucidated based on specific indicators. Out of the 49 indicators across these key components, 10 indicators (20%) were rated as fully implemented/well implemented, 11 indicators (22%) were rated as partially done/somewhat implemented/activity needs to be strengthened, and 12 indicators (24%) were rated as not done at all/not implemented/poor performance. Sixteen indicators (33%) could not be calculated due to lack of data or missing data. CONCLUSIONS: The critical self-evaluation of programme performance has allowed the KZN malaria programme to plan to address key issues moving forward. Based on the findings from the checklist review process, planning exercises were conducted to improve lower-rating indicators, and a monitoring and evaluation framework was created to assess progress on a monthly basis. This is scheduled to be reviewed annually to ensure continued progress toward meeting the elimination goal. In addition, multiple dissemination meetings were held with both provincial senior management and operational staff to ensure ownership of the checklist and its action plan at all levels. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12936-019-2739-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.