The United Against Malaria Project was implemented in Mityana North, Central Uganda, from July 2025 to June 2026. The Community Impact Grant Project was led by the Rotaract Club of Kampala North (KANOS), in partnership with the Rotary Club of Kampala Springs, the Rotary Club of Kampala North, and the Rotaract Club of Bwebajja. The Rotary Club also worked alongside Malaria Partners Uganda, Pilgrim Africa, and the Ministry of Health Uganda's National Expanded Programme on Immunization (UNEPI).
Project Need & Rationale
Malaria remains one of Uganda's leading causes of morbidity and mortality, accounting for a large share of outpatient visits, hospital admissions, and hospital deaths nationally, with children under five bearing a disproportionate share of malaria deaths.
Uganda has made real progress on prevalence over the past decade, falling from roughly 42 percent in 2009 to about 9 percent by 2018, but the country continues to rank among the highest-burden countries globally for both malaria cases and malaria deaths. In 2023, Uganda had nearly 12 million malaria cases and 2,793 deaths. Malaria causes 30–40% of outpatient visits, 20% of hospital admissions, and up to 10% of inpatient deaths.
Mityana North was selected as the project site following two community needs assessments and a follow-up site visit at Kiyonganyi Health Centre II. The most recent assessment recorded an average of 112 malaria cases per week at the facility, with children and pregnant women making up the majority, and noted that roughly 40 of those weekly cases required referral to a regional hospital for specialized treatment.
The assessments also found significant gaps in community knowledge of prevention tools such as indoor residual spraying and intermittent preventive treatment in pregnancy, along with widespread ITN shortages and, in some cases, misuse of nets previously distributed by the Ministry of Health. Local health facilities reported shortages of first-line antimalarial medication and a lack of diagnostic equipment, which limited their ability to confirm and treat malaria cases accurately.
Project Objectives
- Reduce the malaria burden in Mityana North among school-going children and household communities
- Increase access to malaria diagnostic services for community members of Mityana North
- Eliminate mosquito breeding areas around homes and neighborhoods
- Promote 'Malaria Smart Homes', households that practice sound malaria prevention day to day
Implementation - Approach & Activities
The project moved through a phased approach: a pre-visit to secure buy-in and coordinate logistics, a community mobilization push, a concurrent implementation day combining health services and education, and follow-on school and environmental activities.
The project began with a pre-visit to Mityana North, where the team engaged district leadership, health authorities, school administrators, and Village Health Teams (VHTs), including the District Health Officer, the Chief Administrative Officer, the In-Charge of Mityana Health Centre IV, and the District Vector Control Officer. Permissions were formally sought and granted, and logistics were coordinated with local suppliers. Community mobilization followed, supported by a Ministry of Health mobile clinic van that helped inform and prepare households across the targeted villages ahead of the main implementation day.
Integrated Community Outreach
On the main implementation day, activities ran concurrently across community and school settings. Health professionals and partners delivered malaria sensitization sessions covering prevention, early recognition of symptoms, and the dangers of self-medication, paired with practical demonstrations on the correct way to hang, tuck, and maintain mosquito nets. In collaboration with UNEPI and Mityana Health Centre IV, 231 children received immunizations against malaria and other priority childhood diseases in the same outreach, with many receiving their first malaria vaccine dose.
Medical consultations, HIV testing, and referrals to higher-level facilities were carried out alongside these services. Long-lasting insecticide-treated nets, 149 in total, were distributed to pregnant women, mothers of children under one year, and households identified by VHTs as experiencing frequent, persistent malaria.
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Diagnostic Capacity Building
Community needs assessments had identified a shortage of diagnostic tools at local health facilities, limiting how quickly and accurately malaria cases could be confirmed and treated. To address this, the project donated a power and light microscope to the health team at Kiyoganyi Health Centre, with hands-on training provided for facility clinicians on identifying and diagnosing malaria parasites, aimed at reducing misdiagnosis and supporting more timely, accurate treatment.
Alongside the microscope, the project donated rapid diagnostic test (RDT) kits to partner health centers in Mityana North to supplement their existing testing capacity, with 400 tests administered to community members over the course of the project.
Training Community Health Workers
Village Health Teams were central to the project from the start, working under the existing local VHT structure at Mityana North's health centers.
Twelve Community Health Workers and VHT members were trained on malaria prevention as part of the project. In addition, six existing VHTs provided with supplies to support their ongoing work in the community. Training equipped VHTs to identify households without nets, or misusing nets they already had, so that distribution could be targeted to the families most in need, and to correctly carry out indoor residual spraying in partnership with Pilgrim Africa. VHTs went on to lead community-facing work themselves, including demonstrating correct net use and care to residents, extending the project's reach well beyond the households the trained VHTs directly served.
School-Based Malaria Prevention: The Child-to-Family Program
At Namutidde COU Primary School, the project expanded Malaria Partners Uganda's Child-to-Family (C2F) program through interactive training sessions that gave pupils knowledge of malaria transmission, correct use of diagnostic test strips, risk factors, and warning symptoms, along with leadership skills.
This culminated in the selection of a cohort of Malaria Champions, tasked with extending malaria awareness into their own homes and communities. Teachers at the school were also trained on malaria prevention so the program continues with future classes of students.
Namutidde COU Primary School also hosted the project's Mission Green initiative, planting mosquito-repellent tree species, including rosemary, night rose, kisubi, citronella, lavender, neem, and eucalyptus balm, alongside indigenous trees around the school compound. A tree nursery was established on-site for future distribution to surrounding households, and malaria prevention signage was installed around the compound.
Project Outcomes
- Direct beneficiaries: 1,000
- Indirect beneficiaries: ~1,500
- Rotarians and Rotaractors engaged: 150
- ITNs distributed: 149
- RDTs administered: 400
- CHWs/VHTs trained: 12
Qualitative Outcomes
The pre-visit and mobilization work paid off in strong community trust and turnout on the day of implementation, with district leadership, health authorities, and households engaged from the outset. Integrated delivery of immunization alongside malaria services meant that children who had never previously received any vaccination were reached during the outreach, with many getting their first-ever dose of the malaria vaccine in the same visit.
At Namutidde COU Primary School, the Child-to-Family program gave pupils both malaria knowledge and leadership experience, positioning the newly selected Malaria Champions to carry prevention messages home to their families and, over time, into the wider community. Training school teachers on malaria prevention alongside pupils means that awareness building is designed to continue with future classes rather than end with this cohort. The Mission Green tree nursery established at the school was intentionally built to supply seedlings beyond the school compound, extending the project's environmental work into surrounding households as trees mature.
Lessons Learned
Recommendations
-Expand Immunization Coverage- While 231 children were immunized, there is an opportunity to increase outreach to ensure a larger proportion of eligible children are vaccinated, especially in remote households.
-Strengthen Malaria Prevention Outreach- Distribute additional mosquito nets beyond the 149 provided to cover more vulnerable families and sustain the protective effect in the community.
-Scale Up the Child-to-Family (C2F) Program- Train more “Malaria Champions” to extend school-based advocacy and awareness efforts to additional communities, leveraging the ripple effect model, provide more insecticide treated mosquitoes net, the school has a deficit of 300 nets, plant more 50 mosquito repellant provide more Information and communication charts, get C2F shirts for the school pupil ambassadors, and teachers approximately 30, regular visits and progress.
-Increase Environmental Interventions- Expand the Mission Green initiative to more schools and households to plant mosquito-repelling and indigenous trees, further reducing mosquito breeding grounds, plant more 50 indigenous trees around the school compound.
-Integrate Health Services- Continue combining malaria-focused interventions with other essential health services such as HIV testing and general medical consultations to maximize impact during community engagements.
-Upgrade Kiyoganyi Health Centre II to Health Centre III- The facility serves a large population, but its ability to provide comprehensive care is limited by its current status and capacity. Upgrading the facility to Health Centre III, both in terms of human resources and infrastructure, will expand the range of services offered and significantly improve healthcare access and outcomes for the community.
Challenges/Key Learnings
• Access to people's homes was a very big challenge
• Cultural/ traditional beliefs
• Most people were not at home especially during morning hours as they would go to attend to their gardens
• Limited access of water to mix the insecticide
• The targeted homes were very few hence most of the homesteads were left out
• Overwhelming infestation of bedbugs in almost all the households in the villages was evident, the community members wanted the spray team to spray untargeted items like beds, mattresses and mosquito nets as well to kill the bedbugs.
• Some household members wanted the team to spray outside toilets, flowers, coffee
• garden surrounding the households, animal houses, kitchens.
• Some homesteads didn’t want the team to access certain corners of their houses for personal reasons.
Conclusions & Recommendations
• Allocate more funds to cover more households in the identified communities
• Continuous sensitization of the community about the benefits of IRS
• We would like to extend our appreciation to our partners and funders i.e Rotaract Club of Kampala North, Rotaract Club Of Bwebajja, Rotary Club of Kampala Springs, Malaria Partners. for allowing us take part into this exercise, and for also creating a lasting impact to the people of Magoma A&B and Kiyoganyi Mityana North