CDC Activities in the Mekong Region

Female migrant workers in Komrieng District, Battambang Province, Cambodia. They sleep under the plastic sheet (background), keep their belongings under it, and use it as shelter from the rain. Agricultural workers in this area are at especially high risk for malaria. (Courtesy Malaria Consortium)

CDC provides technical assistance to the Mekong Malaria Partnership (MMP), a partnership of six countries in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region (GMS) and their various partners including USAID and WHO. The GMS countries include Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar, People’s Republic of China (Yunnan Province), Thailand, and Vietnam.

This area has long been the center for the development and spread of drug-resistant falciparum malaria. CDC’s technical assistance to the partnership focuses on providing strategic information to the national malaria control programs across the six nations and developing a coordinated subregional response for the containment of antimalarial drug resistance.

CDC works with the United Kingdom-based Malaria Consortium, which helps coordinate activities on behalf of both CDC and the Malaria Consortium. CDC’s recent collaborations include providing technical assistance for a qualitative study on the sociocultural context of malaria transmission among mobile and migrant populations in Cambodia, a consultancy to develop and implement cross border surveillance for malaria between Cambodia and Thailand and to draft a regional strategic framework for malaria control and elimination in the subregion.