Cohort Event Monitoring in Sub Saharan Africa

Malaria is a preventable and treatable disease caused by Plasmodium species. In 2015, It was estimated that, about 1.8 million cases of malaria and about 400, 000 deaths were reported, 90% of which are in Africa. Those children who do not die may suffer brain damage or experience cognitive and learning deficits as a result of the disease severity. Though significant progress has been made in the last decade towards achieving global malaria targets, the disease burden is still relatively high in sub-Saharan African countries, especially among children <5 years of age.

Injectable artesunate (Inj. AS) is a life-saving medication indicated for the treatment of severe/complicated malaria either intravenously or intramuscularly. The current version (3rd edition) of the World Health Organization (WHO) Guidelines for the Treatment of Malaria strongly recommends, based on high-quality evidence, that adults and children with severe malaria should be treated with "intravenous or intramuscular artesunate". Injectable Artesunate is prequalified under the WHO Prequalification Scheme. It has received marketing authorization in nearly all malaria-endemic countries and millions of doses have been distributed for use in the management of severe malaria.

Despite the widespread usage of Inj. AS, the safety database for the product is nearly empty with the WHO Individual Case Safety Reports (ICSR) database containing only 2622 reports to artesunate including Inj AS. Inj AS is considered a safe product even though there have been reports of rare but serious haematological reactions in relation to its use including post-treatment haemolysis and subsequent anaemia, some of them life-threatening and requiring blood transfusion. Experts agree that the benefits of Inj. AS far outweigh any risks it may pose and this formed the basis for the WHO recommendation for the use of Inj. AS as the first product of choice for treating severe malaria except where it is not available and in which case parenteral artemether is recommended conditionally. In view of the millions of doses of Inj AS deployed and used each year, it is important to undertake focused, intensive safety surveillance of the medicine to obtain continuous evidence on its benefits-risk profile and also to prevent undocumented or rare but serious adverse events acting as barriers to its uptake.

Apart from the detailed well-collected safety information obtained during clinical trials, there is no published information on the real-life safety experience of Inj. AS in large cohorts of patients. This study is therefore designed to obtain real-life safety experience of Inj. AS when used in actual practice settings in 4 African countries - Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi and Uganda. The study is designed as a prospective, observational, longitudinal cohort study of patients administered Inj AS in the course of normal clinical practice. The method used is cohort event monitoring which has been deployed for the study of antimalarials and is being suggested as a key method for several post-authorisation safety studies

Inclusion criteria

• Severe Malaria (Plasmodia of any species) diagnosed as per national policies and health facility practice/protocol
• Ability and willingness to participate by giving signed informed consent. In the case of some adults and all children, signed informed consent would be obtained from the patient or a carer/guardian.
• Participants who agree to for follow-up visits and can be contacted by phone.

Exclusion criteria

• Patients (or carers/guardians) unwilling or unable to provide signed informed consent
• Patients with any illness that the investigator feels would be harmful to them to participate in the study
• Has not received Inj AS, AR, or Q.
• Existence of serious concurrent illness