3 Billion Dollars Pledged To Fight Malaria

Featured Article
Main Category: Tropical Diseases
Also Included In: Aid / Disasters;  Infectious Diseases / Bacteria / Viruses
Article Date: 26 Sep 2008 - 7:00 PDT

email to a friend   printer friendly   view / write opinions   rate article

Political leaders and philanthropists gathered at the United Nations (UN) in New York on Thursday to launch a global campaign that brings together government, non-government organizations and the private sector promising to give 3 billion dollars to fight malaria around the world.

UN estimates show that malaria affects 3.3 billion people living in 109 countries, that is about half the world's population and every year over 1 million people die of the disease. The Global Malaria Action Plan (GMAP) aims to reduce levels of illness and death from the disease to half the year 2000 figure by 2010, and to near zero by 2015. The campaign will scale up access to mosquito nets impregnated with insecticide, as well as indoor spraying and treatment programmes.

In a world first, GMAP brings together the efforts of 30 endemic countries and regions and 65 international institutions to accelerate the work that is being done to fight malaria.

The 3 billion dollar commitment includes 1.1 billion from the World Bank, 168 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for vaccine research, 1.6 billion over two years from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, 40 million from the United Kingdom Department for International Aid, and 28 million from Marathon Oil/Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria/Equatorial Guinea. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS commitment also includes an ambitious plan to distribute 100 million bed nets.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described the pledge as "really encouraging", but "of course, we need more," he added, saying there were many areas in desperate need of funds. But staying on a positive note, Ban said the pledge was a "good will demonstration".

Also present were Margaret Chan, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), U2 lead singer Bono, Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, News Corporation president Peter Chernin, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete.

A statement from the President of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, said that the extra funds will "sharply reduce the numbers of malaria-related deaths and illness" in the next three years.

If fully implemented, GMAP could save more than 4.2 million lives between 2008 and 2015, laying the foundation for eventually eradicating the disease altogether.

The cost of implementing GMAP worldwide will be 5.3 billion dollars in 2009, with 2.2 billion required for Africa. In 2010 GMAP will need 6.2 billion (2.86 for Africa), to expand the control programmes. Another 750 to 900 million dollars will also be needed to fund vaccine research and other new tools.

The UN Secretary General's Special Envoy for Malaria, Ray Chambers said:

"To halt and reverse the incidence of malaria is not only a specific Millennium Development Goal it is also essential to improving maternal and child health, improving education and significantly reducing poverty." The eight Millennium Development Goals were agreed by world leaders at a UN summit in 2000 and aim to dramatically reduce poverty, hunger, preventable illness and other socio-economic problems by the year 2015.

Speaking about the pledge from the foundation he and his wife set up in 2000, Bill Gates said:

"We need innovation, new drugs, and the most dramatic thing we need is vaccine".

Gates said that scientists were already working on powerful new vaccines and drugs against malaria, and what was needed was to build on this so that "we can save million of lives and chart a long-term course for eradication of this disease".

Professor Awa Marie Coll-Seck of the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership said that implementing GMAP will achieve six of the eight Millennium Development Goals and that making sure it is put into action should "become the next priority for the international community."

Chair of the RBM Partnership Board, Ethiopian Health Minister Tedros Adhanom, said it took only 18 months to equip everyone in Ethiopia with a protective net. The next step is to escalate this success on a larger scale, to cover all affected regions, "This is what the Global Malaria Action Plan will help us do," said Adhanom.

Click here for Global Malaria Action Plan.

Source: UN news centre, WHO, BBC.

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD


Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today