PARIS (Reuters) – Funding to combat malaria must be more than tripled if the mosquito-borne disease which kills nearly a million people a year is to be fought effectively, health campaigners said yesterday.
Presenting a report covering the past decade, the Roll Back Malaria Partnership said a jump in financing had helped to contain the disease but more needed to be done.
“In all the countries where there is sufficient financing, we are reaching our goals,” said Awa Marie Coll-Seck, executive director of the partnership, which is backed by the World Health Organisation.
Total annual global funding was about $2 billion at the end of 2009, far short of the estimated $6 billion required annually to expand the campaign, the partnership said.
Coll-Seck said malaria remained a leading cause of child mortality in Africa. The partnership said last year the disease was claiming a life nearly every 30 seconds. In worst-hit countries it consumes 40 percent of public health spending.
“Financing has a very swift impact,” said Michel Kazatchkine, director of the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. “In some countries, the number of malaria cases had fallen 50 percent over the past two years.” The fund, set up in 2002, aims to raise government funding for 2011-2013 in the next few months.
One of Roll Back Malaria’s aims is to distribute more insecticide-treated mosquito nets and replace old ones — a cheap, simple and effective way to prevent the disease.
Kenya, Rwanda, Zambia, Ethiopia and Senegal have used 40 percent more mosquito nets between 2003-2005 and 2007-2009, the report said. This has helped to cut malaria cases dramatically.
In Zambia, for example, the number of deaths from malaria fell by 66 percent between 2001-2002 and 2008, according to the report. The number of children hospitalised with malaria fell 55 percent over that period.
The Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria said earlier this month that malaria could be eliminated as a public health problem within a decade in most states where it was endemic so long as funding was secured.
