Joint Annual Meetings of the SMC Alliance and Alliance for Malaria Prevention 2026

Since the first SMC community gathering in Niamey in 2018, partners have convened annually to review progress, share lessons, and shape the strategic direction of seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC). Recommended by WHO in 2012 for children under five and scaled up from 2016 across 12 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, SMC is implemented at scale — protecting millions of children each year.

This year, the SMC Alliance, in partnership with the Alliance for Malaria Prevention (AMP), convened their first joint annual meeting from 24–27 February 2026 at the Speke Resort Munyonyo, on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kampala, Uganda, in a hybrid format, welcoming both in-person and virtual participants.

For the first two days of the joint meeting between the SMC Alliance and Alliance for Malaria Prevention, discussions focused on integration and co-delivery, platforms and policy decisions, digitalization, and funding realities. 

On days 3 and 4 of the SMC Alliance annual meeting, we turned our attention to expanding chemoprevention: seasonal (SMC) and perennial malaria chemoprevention (PMC), intermittent preventive treatment in school-aged children (IPTsc), and post-discharge malaria chemoprevention (PDMC).

SMC has been largely successful, reaching more than 54 million children in 20 countries each year since implementation began in 2012, and the SMC Alliance has helped accelerate the scale-up of these preventive medicines. But there is a growing need to reach children beyond areas where malaria transmission is seasonal, and there are existing platforms and delivery strategies that can align to do so.

In a context of constrained funding, shifting transmission settings and drug resistance, and a collective goal of reaching more children to prevent malaria cases and deaths, the chemoprevention community came together to share best practices and data, discuss learnings, and explore options as national governments and malaria programs consider how to prioritize the interventions that are appropriate for their country.

Meeting presentations and panel discussions are available.