Malaria control through municipalities in the Philippines: struggling with the mandate of decentralized health programme management.

This is a study on the management of the decentralized malaria control programme in Maharlika, Lipunan, a municipality in rural Philippines. The theoretical assumption is that the malaria control programme must be viewed as a system and that success of reform in malaria control depends upon the understanding of management issues by municipal officials. Through interviews, and documents and archival reviews, a framework for describing the dynamics of municipal management of the malaria control programme was developed. The overall finding was that the administrative management system was not functioning optimally: (a) planning and budgeting systems are not helpful; (b) malaria data do not inform planning; and (c) local financial resources are not utilized for malaria control. The underlying causes were: the absence of a clear statement from national offices regarding decentralization of health services, and the management processes, as stipulated in the Local Government Code, were not responsive to the needs of the municipality.