Guest post by: Hannah Bowen, Director of Policy & Advocacy at Malaria No More
In a time of tight budgets and economic uncertainty, there is always a risk that the health challenges primarily affecting poor and marginalized people will be left out of the equation and continue taking an unnecessary toll on those who can least afford to face them. But today, on World Malaria Day, we celebrate the public and private sector supporters who are ensuring that this will not happen with malaria.
Malaria is a treatable and preventable disease and has the ingredients to become a major global health success story. Most policy makers, researchers, and healthcare workers agree that to successfully defeat malaria, we need to maintain universal access to cheap and effective tools for preventing, diagnosing, and treating malaria and continue investing in the next generation of tools – including new diagnostics, vaccines, and drug- and mosquito-control strategies that address the threat of drug and insecticide resistance. Following this recipe, malaria interventions have saved an estimated 3.3 million lives since 2000 – largely thanks to increased global funding.
The scale-up of interventions over the last decade has been made possible by donors including the United States Government, specifically through the President’s Malaria Initiative (led by USAID in partnership with the CDC), and contributions to The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria. Last December, President Obama announced that the U.S. would commit $1 for every $2 that donors pledge to the Global Fund, up to $5 billion for programming between 2014 and 2016. Other governments, foundations, businesses and individuals have already come together to meet that call by pledging over $8 billion.
While donors have made scale-up and rapid progress against malaria possible, reducing malaria mortality rates globally by 42% (and in the most vulnerable group, children under 5 in Africa, by 54%), a broader base of support is needed to reach the end-game of malaria elimination.
Fortunately, that base of support is already being built. For example:
- A group of Indonesian philanthropists led by Dato Sri Dr. Tahir, Chairman and Chief Executive of the Mayapada Group, pledged $40 million for a new Indonesia Health Fund that will invest alongside the Global Fund in health programs focused on HIV, TB and malaria in Indonesia. The Gates Foundation is matching the pledge, and hopes to inspire similar funds in other countries.
- The Asia Pacific Leaders Malaria Alliance (APLMA) was formed in October 2013 at the East Asia Summit, chaired by the governments of Australia and Vietnam. The political leadership APLMA embodies is matched by financial leadership – the establishment of a Regional Malaria and Other Communicable Disease Threats Trust Fund housed by the Asia Development Bank that could become the largest regional investment vehicle for beating not only malaria but other regional health challenges.
- Several African countries made pledges to the Global Fund in the latest replenishment, and Nigeria, co-host of the replenishment, has increased political and financial commitment to health under its “Saving One Million Lives” initiative aimed at reducing preventable maternal and child deaths from several causes, including malaria.
Securing sustainable models for funding malaria control and elimination efforts must also be matched by increasingly targeted and efficient use of funds – another trend already underway. Better malaria surveillance and response, like the systems powered by real-time reporting via mobile phones in Zambia and Cambodia, are helping health workers provide more targeted and effective care.
On this World Malaria Day, we have much to be thankful for, and are encouraged by the broad-based political and financial commitments that will sustain progress over time to ensure no child or mother is killed by this treatable and preventable disease.
Hannah Bowen is Director of Policy & Advocacy at Malaria No More, a New York-based nonprofit determined to end malaria deaths. They’re helping to get it done by engaging leaders, rallying the public, and delivering life-saving tools and education to families across Africa. For more information, visit www.MalariaNoMore.org.
