Four-year-old Desmond Oming from Awir in northern Uganda had “serious fever with a lot of diarrhoea and vomiting”, explained his mum, Jennifer Alwin, when she brought him to Apac District Hospital.

After a lengthy wait in the crowded outpatient department, Desmond was seen by Dr Josephine Apio who suspected malaria and sent him for a blood test. The results came back positive. It was the fourth time he had suffered from malaria in his young life and this time it was severe malaria.

Uganda is a very high burden country with more than 7 million confirmed cases of malaria in 2015 alone.¹ Dr Apio explained that 50 cases of severe malaria had been diagnosed at the hospital in the week Desmond was admitted.

Fortunately, Apac’s hospital is one of the 339 health-care facilities in Uganda that now receive injectable artesunate (Inj AS) for the treatment of severe malaria, through the MMV-led Improving Severe Malaria Outcomes project funded by UNITAID. Inj AS is the WHO-preferred treatment for severe malaria. This lifesaving medicine has been shown to reduce mortality by 22.5% in Africa compared to quinine.²