24 April 2009
World Malaria Day on 25 April is a good opportunity to take stock of the impressive and at times truly innovative work that DFID is doing to combat malaria.
Every year some 247 million people are infected with malaria with nearly 1 million of those dying from the disease. The majority of those deaths occur in Africa and are children. The situation is very serious, but there is some good news as many countries have seen significant reductions in malaria incidence with the scale up of effective interventions – especially increased mosquito bednet delivery and expanded access to effective anti-malarial drugs, and DFID has continued to be at the forefront of that work.
Globally the UK Government remains firmly committed to fighting malaria and is providing £6 billion to 2015 to strengthen the health systems of poor countries, which includes prevention and treatment of malaria. We are also providing up to £1 billion funding to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria; £20 million last year for UNITAID – the global drug purchase; and to date have provided the Roll Back Malaria Partnership with some £50 million.
At last year's “Malaria Summit” in New York as part of the High Level Event, the Prime Minister helped launch the Global Malaria Action Plan. The Plan aims to reduce the burden of malaria by 50% by providing universal access to prevention and treatment services, including bednets and ACT drugs, by 2010. The “Malaria Summit” itself secured almost $3 billion of support from multilateral and bilateral organisations, foundations and the private sector.
At that same event the UK committed £40 million for the Affordable Medicines Facility for Malaria (AMFM) which will make effective malaria drugs more available and affordable in the public, private and NGO outlets. The AMFM was launched in Oslo on Friday 17th April 2009.
DFID Minister Ivan Lewis talks about the importance of bednets in the fight against malaria
Video of Ivan Lewis MP, talking about the importance of bednets in the fight against malaria
One of the most powerful preventative weapons against malaria is the bednet, and last April the Prime Minister pledged that the UK would provide 20 million bednets – since then we have delivered 9.7 million nets and a further 1.9 million are on order. That is 11.6 million nets overall this last year. Most of these nets are going to countries where malaria is a big problem – such as Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Nigeria and Ethiopia.
Another 6.4 million nets are already planned for purchase and are destined for countries such as Nigeria and Kenya so we are well on our way to ensuring that we meeting our 20m target. We will also be keeping up the pressure on the G8 and the EU who have also committed to providing large numbers of bednets. Read more in our stories Free nets fight malaria in Kenya and Nigeria gears up to roll back malaria.
Research into new drugs and treatments is vital to combating the disease and DFID invests in groundbreaking technologies such as the £10m announcement for the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) development of the first paediatric malaria drug - Coartem Dispersible. The new child-friendly medication that was developed with Novartis (called "Coartem D or Coartem Dispersible"), is a real breakthrough. Young children who are very ill with fever have great difficulty in taking traditional malaria medications, which taste foul and many parents have struggled for hours with very sick children, trying to "force" them to take the medicine. Coartem is a cherry flavoured tablet that dissolves in milk, juice, or water and is therefore really easy to take and also a very effective medicine - especially in those regions where the malaria parasites are resistant to chloroquine and other older first-line treatments. It was launched in UK on 23 March 2009, when DFID confirmed a further £19 million funding for MMV from 2010.
Countries like Kenya show what can be done; bednet coverage in certain districts has - with DFID help - increased from 7% in 2004 to 67% of children sleeping under nets in 2006; a study in four districts showed use of nets was associated with a reduction by nearly a half (44%) in child deaths - this equates to seven deaths averted per year for every 1000 nets distributed.
In Ethiopia, the amount of childhood malaria cases reported at clinics fell by 60% and the death rate has been halved within two years. In Rwanda deaths and cases of malaria in children under five fell by over two thirds in two years and in Zambia, more than a third of under 5s now sleep under a net compared to the 16% in 2002.
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