Liberia

The Way Forward

The MENTOR Initiative has initiated a significant emergency response to the Ivoirian refugee crisis and anticipates that this will need to be sustained and probably expanded to meet the needs of more refugees fleeing violence in Ivory Coast over the coming year.
Alongside the emergency response The MENTOR Initiative is working with the National Malaria Control Team (NMCP), the US Presidential Malaria Initiative / USAID to scale up access to effective malaria control through the public health system and at community level.
In addition, The MENTOR Initiative and NMCP, supported by Comic Relief UK and a network of partners including the UK's Innovative Vector Control Consortium (IVCC), London School of Tropical Medicine and US Centre for Disease Control, are launching a Special Initiative that will help Liberia advance the frontiers of malaria control. Over the next three years this Special Initiative will pilot the large scale use, and evaluate the efficacy of Durable Linings (DL) a cutting edge "insecticide treated wall paper for African rural housing" as a replacement for indoor residual spraying. In parallel with this innovative prevention work, the Special Initiative will also assist the NMCP to establish effective malaria diagnosis and treatment for all communities living in slums in Monrovia, the capital city, through a network of over 200 private medicine stores. As around 60% of malaria cases are treated outside of the public system in Liberia, this pilot will help the NMCP greatly expand access to effective case management amongst the countries largest concentration of the population, and may provide a private sector model that can be expanded across other urban areas of the country in future.