Malaria Consortium — Seasonal malaria chemoprevention programme

What problem is Malaria Consortium working on?

Malaria kills around 400,000 people each year, the majority of whom are children under 5. Malaria Consortium reports that malaria, a preventable and treatable disease, threatens 3.2 billion people globally.

What does Malaria Consortium do?

Malaria Consortium’s mission is “to improve lives in Africa and Asia through sustainable, evidence-based programmes that combat targeted diseases and promote child and maternal health.”

Malaria Consortium fights malaria and other diseases through a variety of strategies and programmes. Its seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) programme distributes preventative antimalarial drugs to young children during times of peak malaria transmission.

Through its SMC programme, Malaria Consortium:

• Provides antimalarial medicine (usually through door-to-door delivery) to children in at-risk areas during seasons of particularly high transmission rates. In 2022, Malaria Consortium distributed SMC treatments to 24 million children in seven countries.
• Partners with governments and national malaria programmes to leverage existing healthcare structures.
• Conducts pilot programmes and studies to evaluate the feasibility and impact of scaling-up and expanding into new countries.
• Monitors and evaluates its existing programmes to ensure impact and identify improvement areas. Malaria Consortium conducts surveys to determine how successfully its programmes reach the targeted population. These surveys have found high rates of reach.
• Engages with a variety of organisations, institutions, and agencies to advocate, fundraise, and share research and knowledge related to malaria prevention and programme implementation. It is a leader in the SMC Alliance and chairs its research sub-group.
• Promotes community acceptance of SMC programmes.

Why is Malaria Consortium’s SMC programme one of our top-rated charities?

Malaria Consortium’s SMC programme meets our criteria to be top-rated because one of our trusted evaluators, GiveWell, has conducted an extensive evaluation highlighting its cost-effectiveness. (Our trusted evaluators are charitable giving experts who focus on impact — their research into the best charities means your donations can do even more good. Learn more about charity evaluators we trust and why.)

GiveWell estimates that the cost of protecting one child from malaria through this program is about $7 — $1.66 for one of (typically) four monthly treatments. Malaria Consortium has been a GiveWell top charity since 2016.

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