Institution Background
Malaria Free Mekong
The Malaria Free Mekong is a network platform of civil society organizations and communities from the Global Fund RAI implementing countries: Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. The Malaria Free Mekong serves as the CSOs’ constituency engagement mechanism for the Global Fund RAI grant. The Platform was established in 2014 with the initiative of Louis Da Gama and Promboon Panitchpakdi to bridge community, project implementers, policymakers, and donors at the RAI RSC level. The platform also fills the gap of coordination and communication of CSOs serving the community at the national and regional levels. The platform works closely with the non-government organizations in each RAI implementing countries and the RAI RSC secretariat through CSO representatives. Maxine Whittaker and Josselyn Neukom serve as the CSO representatives in Regional Artemisinin-resistance Initiative 3 Elimination (RAI3E) for 2021-2023 at RSC.
Civil Society Organization (CSO)
CSOs play a crucial role in malaria control and elimination in the GMS, especially in providing services to remote and hard-to-reach communities where governments have limited access and capacity to reach out for providing services. Efforts to eliminate malaria within a targeted timeline require greater coordination and collaboration as well as harmonization of activities on multiple relevant stakeholders. As the malaria burden in the GMS is increasingly concentrated along borders and forested areas, CSOs have built unique relationships of trust with the affected communities, many of which are mobile and migrant populations (documented and undocumented), illegal workers, ethnic groups and marginalized population. The CSOs are also filling the void of access to services in remote and conflict areas where government system is difficult to reach the community.
The Malaria Free Mekong communicates and coordinates with the CSOs in each RAI implementing country to identify the bottleneck and challenges. The platform has three steering committee members in each country; one of them serves as a focal point for communication and coordination with the national stakeholders.
Contribute to malaria elimination effort in the Greater Mekong Sub region
- Facilitate meaningful coordination and partnership between civil society organizations and other key malaria actors including donors, governments, and other relevant stakeholders (ethnic health and data sharing entities)
- Advocate for enabling policy, strategies, and plans that include community-based services and respect the rights of all communities in the GMS (communicate successes, values added and contribution of communities and civil society organizations in malaria elimination efforts, enabling environment, domestic resource mobilization, accountability of spending, more funding for CSO)
- Strengthen capacity among civil society actors by leveraging the strengths of implementing and other technical partners (community engagement tools and guidance, as well as community advocate)