A Quasi-Experimental Study to Assess the Effectiveness of Malaria Camps as Part of the Odisha State Malaria Elimination Drive

The persistently high malaria burden in the remote forested areas of Odisha, India has led to the introduction of 'malaria camps' by the Odisha State Malaria Control Program where teams of health workers visit villages to educate the population, enhance vector control with long-lasting insecticide nets (LLINs) and indoor residual spraying (IRS), and perform village-wide screening with rapid diagnostic tests and treatment for malaria. The camps appear to be very effective but this is hard to assess in the context of ongoing changes such as LLIN introduction. The long-term goal of this project is to evaluate the effectiveness of malaria camps (MCs) by determining if they reduce malaria, and to characterize malaria transmission in MCs. The major objective to achieve this is through a quasi-experimental study (i.e., pretest-post-test control group design) of the effectiveness of the intervention, to determine if MCs reduce the prevalence of clinical and asymptomatic malaria as detected by PCR. In the first year, villages will be assigned across three study arms: arm 1 to receive new MCs; arm 2 is a control with no MCs but with standard malaria control; and arm 3 consists of villages already in receipt of MCs to study longer term effects. In the second year, both arm 1 and arm 2 villages will receive the intervention (i.e., a non-randomized stepped-wedge design). MC effectiveness will be evaluated from epidemiologic surveys and PCR detection of malaria prevalence with and without MCs.