WHO Malaria Molecular scheme (MM) 2017 - present:
Malaria remains a global disease of concern. The WHO recommends diagnosis of malaria to be based on parasite identification, both in endemic and non-endemic settings. Furthermore, there has been an increase in usage of molecular techniques for identification of malaria infections. Molecular assays have lots of benefits, however, are not without their challenges- such as lack (or limited use of) standards and lack of reproducibility primarily due to variation in protocols amongst labs. Hence the need for a robust EQA scheme targeted towards molecular diagnostics was recognised by the WHO in order to offer an independent and periodic means for clinical, reference and research laboratories to verify the quality of their molecular diagnostic methods and to monitor performance over time.
An expert group meeting on establishing a WHO EQA scheme for malaria molecular diagnostics was held in June 2015 in London, UK, following which the WHO Global Malaria Programme worked with UK NEQAS Parasitology to launch a global EQA scheme in January 2017. The scheme has been operational now for 9 years, running with over 50 participating labs globally. See: Thomson RM, Cunningham JA, Gatton MM, Murphy SC, de la Paz Ade M, Ding XC, Incardona S, Legrand E, Lucchi N, Menard D, Nsobya SL, Saez AC, Shrivastava J, Chiodini PL. WHO malaria nucleic acid amplification test external quality assessment scheme: results of eleven distributions over 6 years. Malar J. 2025 Mar 23;24(1):94. doi: 10.1186/s12936-025-05282-0. Available on open access at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12936-025-05282-0