"Sustain Gains, Save Lives"

“Sustain Gains, Save Lives” was the theme for this year’s World Malaria Day which was on the 25^th of April.

Global efforts to combat malaria have saved over one million lives worldwide and reduced malaria deaths in Africa by over 33% in 10 years according to the World Health Organisation. Despite this reported success there is a need to sustain this progress in the global campaign against malaria, and this can be done through increased investment and smarter inventions.

Tony Blair, the former UK Prime Minister, does not see any reason why malaria – an utterly preventable disease – cannot be eradicated in Africa and elsewhere.  Prevention and treatment of malaria is cheap. One insecticide-treated net plus distribution costs less than $10 while anti-malaria drug is less than $2 per person.

Rapid Diagnostic Tests (RDTs) help in the diagnosis of malaria by detecting evidence of malaria parasites in human blood. They allow the testing of people who cannot access diagnosis based on microscopy. Photo by Novartis AG

There is a challenge at present to raise around $3.2 billion to get to the point of a near-zero deaths by 2015. This additional funding would be used to purchase bed nets, which needs to be replaced every three years – this help control malaria as well as address the issue of drug resistance – and facilitate access to medicines and rapid diagnosis.

Children holding bed nets. Photo by Afrika Force

The African Leaders Malaria Alliance with Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as its new chairman has agreed to close this resource gap through the following measures:

• Using World Bank funding to protect the eradication campaign’s progress and prevent a resurgence of the disease

• Increasing domestic financing for health services to achieve a previously agreed target allocation of 15% of public sector budgets to the health sector

• Considering innovative financing approaches to further expand Africa’s resource pool for health

However several donors and organization are doing a lot to eradicate malaria.

• Partnership for Transforming Health System 2 is working with the Clinton Health Access Initiative to help distribute artemisinin-based combination therapies in five Nigerian states through the Affordable Medicines Facility for malaria initiative, an innovative financing mechanism designed to expand countries access to ACT.

• African Development Bank meanwhile is helping support the control of communicable diseases in the Southern African Development Community region with a $30 million grant.

• The World Health Organization is also playing a part by launching a new initiative tagged T3: Test, Treat, Track. This initiative urges the global health community to scale up diagnostic testing, treatment and surveillance of malaria.

These new initiatives are a welcome addition to the many other program working to bring malaria deaths to a near-zero.