Malaria Deaths

Halving of malaria deaths celebrated

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Mosquito
Global efforts have halved the number of people dying from malaria – a tremendous achievement, the World Health Organization says.

It says between 2001 and 2013, 4.3 million deaths were averted, 3.9 million of which were children under the age of five in sub-Saharan Africa.

Each year, more people are being reached with life-saving malaria interventions, the WHO says.

In 2004, 3% of those at risk had access to mosquito nets, but now 50% do.

PNG
Villagers from the Highlands in Papua New Guinea NG have been trained to detect and treat the disease in the community

Winning the fight

There has been a scaling up of diagnostic testing, and more people now are able to receive medicines to treat the parasitic infection, which is spread by the bites of infected mosquitoes.

An increasing number of countries are moving towards malaria elimination.

In 2013, two countries – Azerbaijan and Sri Lanka – reported zero indigenous cases for the first time, and 11 others (Argentina, Armenia, Egypt, Georgia, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco, Oman, Paraguay, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) succeeded in maintaining zero cases.

In Africa, where 90% of all malaria deaths occur, infections have decreased significantly.

Here, the number of people infected has fallen by a quarter – from 173 million in 2000 to 128 million in 2013. This is despite a 43% increase in the African population living in malaria transmission areas.

WHO director general Dr Margaret Chan said: “These tremendous achievements are the result of improved tools, increased political commitment, the burgeoning of regional initiatives, and a major increase in international and domestic financing.”

But she added: “We must not be complacent. Most malaria-endemic countries are still far from achieving universal coverage with life-saving malaria interventions.”

Emerging drug- and insecticide-resistance continued to pose a major threat, and if left unaddressed, could trigger an upsurge in deaths, she warned.

 

Malaria in Africa

528,000

deaths from malaria in 2013

54%

drop in mortality since 2000

  • 49% of at-risk people in sub-Saharan Africa have access to mosquito nets
  • 70% of malaria patients could be treated but not all sick children are taken to a clinic
  • 43% of pregnant women did not receive a single dose of preventative medicine
WHO Malaria report 2014
AFP

There are also fears that the ongoing Ebola crisis in West Africa may set back the malaria fight.

Globally, an estimated 3.2 billion people are at risk of being infected with malaria and developing the disease.

Although malaria funding totalled $2.7bn (£1.7bn) in 2013 – a threefold increase since 2005 – it is still significantly below the $5.1bn needed to achieve global targets for malaria control and elimination, says WHO.

Based on current trends, 64 countries are on track to meet the Millennium Development Goal target of reversing the incidence of malaria by the end of this year.

Time for the Big Push to Defeat Malaria.

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Moments of historic greatness are rarely realized by a single actor. Instead, they require the work of partners, with a sense of shared responsibility and coordinated action. The Big Push to defeat malaria is no different. In the past 10 years, partners working together have reversed malaria’s spread and prevented millions of deaths, mostly of children under the age of five. Yet even with all that progress, malaria still claims a child’s life every minute. So we have more work to do. Science has given us the tools to defeat this disease. We will achieve greatness by getting it done.

Today we have insecticide-treated nets rather than just regular nets that last longer, significantly reducing costs. There are new drugs to tackle resistant strands and rapid diagnostic tests that allow us to identify kids that do and don’t have malaria. We are moving in the right direction. Global malaria mortality rates have dropped by 26 percent and half of the malaria endemic countries are on track to meeting the global target of reducing malaria case incidence by 75 percent by 2015.

As a global community, our fates are often more intertwined than we like to imagine. Controlling malaria isn’t only a prospect of preventing needless deaths, it is an economic imperative. Entrepreneurs, farmers and traders who are at home sick themselves or with their kids cost Africa an estimated $12 billion a year in productivity. Defeating malaria is one of the first steps we can take to speed up Africa-driven economic growth.

Later this year, the international community will gather to pledge money to the Global Fund for the next three years. In April, the Global Fund requested $15 billion from donors as an investment towards the historical opportunity of defeating these diseases. It’s the kind of investment where the return will be measured in lives saved, and the increased productivity of developing countries no longer burdened by deaths from mosquito bites.

Essential to maximizing these investments, African leaders will continue to demonstrate their own commitment to national health programs both financially and with human resources. The African Leaders Malaria Alliance, a consortium of 49 leaders from the continent, tracks country progress in preventing and treating the disease, with government leaders holding one another accountable to keep malaria a priority, while working towards the goal of near zero deaths by the end of 2015.

With less than 1,000 days until the clock runs out on the 2015 Millennium Development Goals, our resolve will be tested both before and after the zero hour. Meeting the health related MDGs would no doubt be a great accomplishment for our global brothers and sisters, but history will judge us by whether or not we fill our war chest and use our proven strategies and tools to defeat these diseases. As partners in this fight, this is our shared opportunity and responsibility.

Source: huffingtonpost.com