Uganda is stepping up its efforts to combat malaria by bringing testing and treatment straight to rural households, aiming to cut out the long travel times that often delay life-saving medical care.<\/p>\n
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According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), a Ministry of Health initiative is equipping Village Health Teams and Community Health Extension Workers to carry out rapid diagnostic testing and hand out free medication directly within local villages. Previously, community health workers primarily targeted children under five, forcing older children and adults to undertake long, costly journeys to formal health centers just to get diagnosed.<\/p>\n
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The roll-out forms part of Uganda’s “24-2 Hours Initiative,” an ambitious plan to ensure patients receive a diagnosis and start treatment within 24 hours of developing symptoms, while guaranteeing that severe cases get emergency pre-referral care within two hours.<\/p>\n
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Although Uganda has cut malaria deaths by more than half since 2000, the disease remains one of its biggest public health threats. WHO estimates reveal that the country recorded roughly 13.2 million cases in 2025, leading to between 16 000 and 20 000 deaths. Health officials point out that many of these fatalities happen simply because patients wait more than a day before seeking help.<\/p>\n
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Backing from international partners, including the Global Fund, the United States Government, and United Nations Children’s Fund, has allowed the government to deploy around 85 000 community health workers across the country.<\/p>\n
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According to Dr. Cathrine Maiteki Sebuguzi of the National Malaria Elimination Department, meeting patients where transmission actually happens is key to clearing the final hurdles toward malaria elimination. WHO Uganda lead Dr Christine Chiedza Musanhu added that decentralising care ensures isolated and low-income families are no longer left behind.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–ChannelAfrica\/WHO–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":23170,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-48918","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Uganda is stepping up its efforts to combat malaria","published_date":"2026-10-23 16:54:37","news_description":"Uganda is stepping up its efforts to combat malaria","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/48918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/48918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48920,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/48918\/revisions\/48920"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=48918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}