Malaria
The issue
Malaria is a common and life-threatening disease transmitted by mosquitoes, currently endemic in over 100 countries. Each year, more than 500 million people suffer from acute malaria resulting in more than 1 million deaths – approximately 90% of these in sub-Saharan Africa. Children under 5 years of age account for 82% of all malaria deaths, and every day close to 3000 children die of the disease. Malaria has lifelong effects on cognitive development, education and productivity levels. The disease causes an average loss of 1.3% of annual economic growth in countries with intense transmission. The evidence shows that malaria is not a consequence of poverty but a cause of continuing poverty.
The opportunities / the solutions
- Malaria is both preventable and curable. Providing access to effective treatment and simple preventive measures, such as insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) and indoor residual spraying, will help to achieve the goal of controlling malaria.
- Global investments in malaria such as the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the World Bank Booster Program, US President's Malaria Initiative, and others increased steadily from 1998–2005.
- Countries are recognizing the importance of changing policies from ineffective single-drug therapies to effective treatment such as artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs).1 They are also implementing programmes to protect households with long-lasting insecticidal nets2 and conducting indoor residual spraying campaigns to control vector mosquitoes.
The challenges
- Many programmes are lagging behind as countries do not have sufficient managerial and technical skills and lack capacity to absorb the funding.
- While there are specific goals for malaria control, there has been no clear strategy on how to achieve targets and measure progress/impact. Without developing consensus on a comprehensive strategy, the effort by many partners will not be effective.
- Malaria needs funding both for commodities and for technical assistance to countries. Effective technical assistance will ensure that commodities are distributed and used appropriately and that the money helps to achieve longer-term goals.
The costs
- On average it will cost US$ 3.4 billion a year to effectively reduce the malaria burden. Resources still fall short of what is needed – the gap worldwide is approximately US$ 2.7 billion a year.
- The WHO's newly created Global Malaria Programme (GMP) has a funding gap for 2006–2007 of US$ 80 million.
WHO's role
- GMP aims to help countries with the correct policy and technical advice, so that they are better equipped to fully use available funds and achieve results.
- By 2008:
- WHO will help 20 countries provide 100 million people with access to safe and effective medicines.
- WHO will help 7 countries to expand their bednet distribution to entire communities and distribute 21 million LLINs to cover an additional 42 million people.
- 15 selected countries will be assisted to scale up indoor residual spraying by 80% to protect 75 million people.
- GMP's work will also build on integrated approaches to infectious diseases to further strengthen health systems and build public health capacity for the longer term.
1 There has been an exponential increase in anti-malarial treatments procured by endemic countries: from 4 million ACTs procured in 2004 to more than 30 million in 2005,
2 Close to 50 million additional people benefited from the 25 million bednets that were procured and distributed in 2005.
Related links
For more information contact:
Edward Vela
Telephone: +41 22 791 4550
