Geneva, 17 April 2026 – The Geneva Learning Foundation releases the first peer-generated evidence base from more than a thousand frontline health workers on what is working, what is failing, and what needs to change in the fight against malaria.
The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) today releases Malaria: Turning the tide, the first peer-generated evidence base from the 11th Teach to Reach event, organized in partnership with the RBM Partnership to End Malaria.
The report is published in English and French on the occasion of World Malaria Day 2026.
The report documents what health workers from across the Global South know about malaria in the places where they live and work.
It is also the first output from a new TGLF malaria initiative that launches this spring.
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What the report is
Official guidelines tell health workers what to do about malaria.
They cannot capture the daily reality of implementing control measures in a village during the rainy season, in a clinic where the rapid diagnostic tests have run out, or in a community where families use bed nets for fishing because the river feeds their children.
Malaria: Turning the tide is built from the voluntary contributions of frontline health workers who responded to a set of questions before the 11th Teach to Reach event. Their answers, in English and French, were analysed into eight thematic chapters covering personal experience, local disease trends, treatment, bed nets, vector control, vaccination, community action, and what governments should do next.
It is a record of what health workers told each other, very different from a summary of what experts think health workers need.
What health workers said
Many contributors have had malaria themselves, often more than once, and have watched it move through their own households.
Chinonye Sussan Nkemakolam, Public Health Nutritionist, Ministry of Health, Imo State, Nigeria:
“I personally had an episode where I had this malaria and took virtually all prescribed drugs given by my doctor and injections and infusions to no avail.I felt I was going to die from this dreaded disease, but somehow I and my children survived it.”
Muntumaladi Kasabutu Edna, Physician, Ministry of Health, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo:
“My community in general, and my family in particular, do not go more than two weeks without someone being struck down by malaria.”
Bisimwa Muzusa Emmanuel, Physician, Ministry of Health, Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo:
“My own family has been affected by malaria, and this year alone, three of my children (aged 1, 3 and 5) have suffered from it, despite sleeping under mosquito nets, and the youngest has even been hospitalized. This has been a period of psychological and financial upheaval.”
Climate change is not an abstraction in these accounts. It is changing when and where mosquitoes bite, and health workers are adapting faster than the textbooks.
Joseph Gyebi-Buaben, Public health worker, Ministry of Health, Dormaa East, Ghana:
“We have always learnt that Anopheles bite at night and rest during the day but this has changed. I think our usual approach and thinking about mosquitoes needs to shift to this new dynamic which will help us eliminate and eradicate malaria.”
When local efforts work, they work because communities co-own them. Maxwell Owusu, Research Coordinator, Ministry of Health, Kumasi, Ghana:
“I noticed changes when our community hospital reported a significant 35% drop in malaria cases compared to the previous year. Residents attributed it to successful health campaigns organized by the regional and district health workers, a noticeable decrease in community stagnant water sources due to improved drainage maintenance, and increasing access to bed nets.”
Dr Amisi Nyengo Gilbert, Public health expert, Ministry of Health, Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo:
“What worked was the active involvement of local chiefs and community leaders in raising awareness. Trust they inspire has helped to reinforce the adoption of preventive behaviour.”
And for many participants, the event itself changed how they understand the disease they thought they already knew. Sarah Kamangu Meta, Community health worker, Mont-Amba district, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo:
“Before, I did not master the subject in detail, and I did not see malaria as a disease to avoid since most people are already used to it. Following this training I changed my way of seeing it.”
Adeleye Akeem Oladele, Oyo State Primary Health Care Board, Nigeria:
“Participating in Teach to Reach broadened my perspective, helping me see my world differently. I realized malaria’s intricate links with climate, education, economics and social justice.”
What the themes add up to
Read together, the contributions describe a malaria response that is more stuck than any dashboard suggests.
- Drugs exist, but they are expensive, and in their absence families turn to street medicines or traditional healers, which delays diagnosis until the child is already critical.
- Bed nets work, but acceptance is uneven because of heat, skin reactions, and disrupted sleep.
- Vaccines are welcomed in principle, and almost entirely unknown in practice at the frontline.
- Vector control is cheap, effective, and chronically under-resourced.
- Climate change is shifting mosquito behaviour in ways that official protocols have not yet caught up with.
What the contributors keep returning to is that none of these tools work alone, and none of them work without the trust of the community.
- The most striking success stories in the report combine bed nets, drainage, chemoprevention, and door-to-door conversations led by community health workers, youth groups, and village leaders.
- They are not scalable because they are packaged.
- They are scalable because they are owned locally.
Why this matters now, more than ever
Global malaria mortality has plateaued.
The World Health Organization has called for reinvigorated global efforts to curb the rising threat.
Funding is tightening.
Drug and insecticide resistance are spreading.
In 2024, an estimated 610,000 people died from malaria, mostly young children in sub-Saharan Africa.
In this context, the stagnation is not primarily a biology problem or a technology problem.
It is a problem of whose knowledge counts in the design of the response.
A recent analysis by Reda Sadki and Charlotte Mbuh argued that the malaria plateau is at its core a workforce crisis, and that the health workers closest to communities are the most underused source of operational intelligence the response has.
An earlier article on subnational tailoring showed how the gap between national plans and local implementation is precisely where experiential knowledge becomes decisive.
And a new evaluation of peer learning for malaria national programme staff found that a single two-hour peer event with more than 1,700 health workers from 46 countries outperformed a four-month programme on professional influence, practice impact, and worldview change.
Malaria: Turning the tide puts that argument on a concrete footing. It is the raw material of a different way of working.
A resource by and for health workers
The report is not a set of prescriptions.
It does not ask anyone to copy what someone else did in another country.
It asks health workers to read what their peers are doing, notice what resonates with their own setting, and adapt.
A community health worker in Cameroon put the logic plainly in her reflection after the event. Boubakari Hamadou, NGO, Maroua, Cameroon:
“My participation allowed me to understand the realities elsewhere and to know that the challenges I encounter are also possible elsewhere.”
That sentence is the organising principle of the whole report.
The problems are shared.
The solutions are local.
The learning has to move sideways, peer to peer, to travel at all.
What comes next
Malaria: Turning the tide is the first output from a new TGLF collaboration with the Gates Foundation to strengthen malaria care in West and Central Africa by supporting the health providers who actually deliver it. The initiative will organise thousands of public and private sector health workers into peer problem-solving networks focused on data quality and use, private sector integration, and the introduction of new vector control tools including gene drive. Further insights reports will follow over the next twenty-four months. The 12th Teach to Reach event will be held later in 2026 and will continue to listen to what the frontline has to say.
Access the report
- Malaria: Turning the tide (Teach to Reach 11 Listening and Learning Report 19) (1.0). The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15126588
- Paludisme : inverser la tendance (Teach to Reach 11 – Rapport « Écouter et apprendre » n° 19). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18067469
Both versions are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
About The Geneva Learning Foundation
The Geneva Learning Foundation is a Swiss non-profit that connects more than 80,000 health practitioners in over 137 countries through peer learning networks designed to turn frontline experience into action. Its Teach to Reach events connect thousands of health workers from the Global South together online to share what is working in their communities and to learn from each other.
Media contact
Claude Cardot claude.cardot@learning.foundation +41 77 231 96 91