Malaria is a major public health problem in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in DRC, with 27.3 million cases of malaria and 24,880 malaria deaths reported in 2022.

An effective surveillance, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system that produces high quality data is essential for the monitoring of malaria trends, evaluation of the impact of malaria control interventions, and evidence-based decision-making. Problems with the quality of malaria data persist in the DRC, limiting the national malaria control program’s (NMCP) informed decision-making and ability to launch a timely response to identified priorities.

To address this need, the DRC NMCP – with support from PATH MACEPA – has developed a decentralized routine data quality audit (RDQA) process that was piloted in four health zones in Haut-Katanga. An overview of the pilot, preliminary results, and next steps are summarized in this brief.