People who live in Ethiopia’s most rural areas still face severe outbreaks of this devastating disease. Yeraber Health Center, about 136 miles from Bahir Dar, the capital of the Amhara Regional State, is inaccessible by vehicle year-round and perilous to reach during the long rainy season. Patients with critical malaria have needed to be transported to a larger regional hospital by mule or carried on stretcher for a two-hour journey that requires crossing an overflowing river that has claimed has many lives.

Since 2019, the Malaria Diagnosis and Treatment Activity (MDTA) team at ICAP’s regional office in the Amhara region have courageously crossed the dangerous river in a locally-made airboat and then walked for hours to reach the health center to provide comprehensive technical and logistic support. “This daring approach to reach inaccessible health facilities has had remarkable success in improving malaria diagnosis and treatment services,” stated Simeneh Atnafu, MDTA program manager at ICAP’s regional office in Amhara region.

MDTA, implemented by ICAP in Ethiopia, is currently supporting 15 hospitals, 141 health centers and 611 health posts in 25 districts of the Amhara regional state. The teams train and provide onsite mentorship to clinical and laboratory personnel on fever case management and laboratory diagnosis of malaria and provide health facilities with essential national guidelines and manuals, as well as support tools including job aids, bench aids, desktop references and M&E tools, and QA/QC formats. Providing these capacity-building resources, the MDTA efforts have improved the competency and skills of laboratory personnel and clinicians so they are capable of effectively diagnosing and treating malaria cases as the country looks toward a day when this deadly disease will not take such a dramatic toll on its people.