Global efforts against malaria yields positive results: UN

(Dec. 14, 2011) The expansion of malaria prevention and control measures have resulted in a decline of more than 25 per cent in the number of deaths caused by the disease in the past decade, and a 33 per cent reduction in mortality rates in Africa, the disease’s heartland, according to a United Nations report unveiled on Tuesday. The World Malaria Report by the UN World Health Organization (WHO) attributes the success to the widespread use of bed nets, better diagnostics and greater availability of effective drugs. The agency, however, warned that a projected shortfall in funding for the global anti-malaria campaign threatens the fragile gains, stressing that that the double challenge of emerging resistance to drugs and insecticide needs to be addressed. “The future depends heavily on assuring the resources that we need to carry on the fight, and on looking for ways to improve our efficiency,” said Robert Newman, the Director of WHO’s Global Malaria Programme, speaking to reporters in New York via video link from the agency’s headquarters in Geneva.
“One of those ways would be to develop longer-lasting insecticide-treated nets that can protect people for as much as five years and might cut our need for insecticide-treated nets between now and 2020 from 1.25 billion to 750 million nets, saving us $3.8 billion over that time period,” he said.
There were an estimated 216 million cases of malaria in 106 endemic countries and territories across the world last year, according to the report. An estimated 81 per cent of those cases and 91 per cent of deaths occurred in Africa. Globally, 86 per cent of malaria sufferers were children under the age of five.