On 4 December 2024, the Southern African Development Community hosted a first-of-its-kind meeting on malaria molecular surveillance as part of the ongoing efforts under the Elimination 8 initiative. MARC SE-Africa experts such as Dr Eulambius Mlugu and Dr Jaishree Raman provided invaluable insights into the ongoing challenges posed by drug-resistant malaria and the importance of robust molecular surveillance systems.

On 19 November 2024, the MARC SE-Africa Consortium, in partnership with the International Society for Neglected Tropical Diseases (ISNTD), hosted a webinar to address the urgent need for collaborative efforts to tackle antimalarial drug resistance in Africa. This timely event was held in recognition of World Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Awareness Week.

The MARC SE-Africa consortium unveils the Antimalarial resistance dashboard - a new tool that brings data on antimalarial resistance in Southern and Eastern Africa to key stakeholders.

In the lead-up to Roll Back Malaria’s (RBM) Case Management Working Group annual meeting, MARC SE-Africa held a stakeholder event on 22-23 September 2024, aimed at coordinating regional action against antimalarial drug resistance.

MARC SE-Africa coordinator Prof Karen I Barnes and project partners Mehul Dhorda, Aline Uwimana, Jean-Louis Ndikumana Mangara, Leon Mutesa, and Arjen Dondorp have contributed to an article in the journal Science, calling for urgent action on artemisinin resistance in Africa.

Dr Stephanie van Wyk and Dr Jaishree Raman spoke at the 9th Southern Africa Research Conference, providing insight into the importance of malaria surveillance in driving informed malaria control strategies.

In July 2024, members of the Mitigating Antimalarial Resistance Consortium for South and East Africa (MARC SE-Africa) gathered in Kampala, Uganda, for a series of strategic meetings aimed at addressing the growing concerns about antimalarial drug resistance across the region.

On 22 April, MARC SE-Africa consortium held a symposium on regional strategies to combat antimalarial resistance in southern and eastern Africa as part of this year’s Pan-African Malaria Conference in Kigali, Rwanda.

At this year’s Multilateral Initiative on Malaria’s 8th Pan-African Malaria Conference, MARC-SE Africa launched Moxie-bot. This innovative chatbot helps practitioners access up-to-date resources on antimalarial drug resistance.

On 21 April 2024, MARC SE-Africa convened for a brainstorming and External Technical Advisory Committee (ETAC) meeting at the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria (MIM) Conference held in Kigali, Rwanda.

The WorldWide Antimalarial Resistance Network (WWARN) has launched an interactive map that helps malaria researchers find clinical trial publications in specific regions. This new feature is an update to their open-access library, which offers access to clinical efficacy trials of human-infecting plasmodium dating back to 1946.

MARC SE-Africa took the stage at the East Africa Community (EAC) Great Lakes Malaria Initiative (GLMI) coordination meeting in the United Republic of Tanzania. Stakeholders from across the region strategized and collaborated on efforts to control malaria, with a focus on cross-border areas.

MARC SE-Africa and the University of Oxford’s Worldwide Antimalarial Resistance Network launched the Correlation between Kelch13 and Clinical Phenotype Study Group to advance our understanding of malaria resistance.

Listen to the podcast “An Old Killer, Malaria, Learns New Tricks”, in which Prof Karen Barnes explains the problem and possible solutions to One Health Trust.

The MARC SE-Africa consortium is all about collaboration and works to respond to the growing crisis in malaria by better defining the extent of antimalarial resistance in Southeast Africa and expediting the sharing of such evidence with National Malaria Programmes and their implementation partners.

The WHO's Meeting on Antimalarial Resistance held in November in Kampala, Uganda. MARC SE-Africa has been represented by Stephanie van Wyk, Elias Phiri, Joaniter Nankabirwa, Donnie Mategula, and Rhona Mijumbi.

The RBM Partnership To End Malaria. Case Management Working Group held its 12th annual meeting in Accra, Ghana from 22 to 25 August 2023, where MARC SE-Africa was represented by Donnie Mategula (Malawi) and Karen Barnes (Coordinator).

The imminent threat of artemisinin resistance prompted a group of emerging and established researchers from Uganda, Malawi, Ethiopia and South Africa to get together for the MARC SE-Africa Writers’ Retreat in Cape Town (14-18 August 2023) to fast track their ongoing work to tackle this issue in Africa.

The MARC SE-Africa team members convened in Zanzibar in May 2023 for a first in-person meeting to discuss project activities over the coming four years.

The University of Cape Town (UCT) announced today the launch of MARC SE-Africa (Mitigating Antimalarial Resistance Consortium in Southern and East Africa). Over the next 4 years, MARC SE-Africa will receive almost 4.2 million Euro from the Global Health EDCTP3 Joint Undertaking established under the European Unions’ research and innovation programme, Horizon Europe.