Our History
The National Malaria Control Programme (PNLP) is marking twenty-eight years of existence this year. As the technical arm of the Congolese government in charge of malaria control, the PNLP has a long history behind it.
For more information on our history, please download the Ministerial Orders below:
1977 - 1982
PLAP
Indeed, the archives show that the organization of malaria control in the DRC first evolved as a project of the Ministry of Public Health (MSP) under the name “Anti-Malaria Control Project” (PLAP).
1982 - 1998
PEV/LMTE
Later, the PLAP was attached to the Expanded Programme on Immunization and Control of Communicable Childhood Diseases (PEV/LMTE), within which it operated as a unit in charge of malaria control (LAP) for six years, from 1982 to 1998.
1998 - present
NMCP
In the end, it was in November 1998 that the LAP unit was elevated to the level of a national programme (PNLP). This elevation was formalized by the signing, three months earlier, of Order No. 1250/CAB/MIN/SP/008/1998 of 22 July 1998 by Minister Jean-Baptiste Sondji.
Today, the PNLP’s malaria control policy is part of the “Roll Back Malaria” (RBM) initiative and aims to reduce the suffering and poverty that this endemic disease causes to the population. The policy focuses on core strategic areas, namely prevention, case management, and epidemic detection and response, as well as support areas such as monitoring and coordination, and partnership.
NMCP
The PNLP logo is a combined (pictorial and lettering) logo. It consists of two circles containing the name of our country and that of the Ministry of Health. At the centre, the Programme’s acronym lies across a mosquito, specifically the female Anopheles, whose bite transmits malaria. The explanation is simple: the symbolism of two circles is often used to represent the sun and the moon and therefore reflects human effort to move towards a certain transcendence of reality. Here, the two circles thus symbolize the magic of science in its aim to control, eliminate and defeat the mosquito, and therefore malaria. This is why the PNLP sits above the Anopheles, to crush it.
