Malaria

The Challenge

For millions of people around the world, a simple mosquito bite can have deadly consequences. Every year, malaria kills approximately 781,000 people- mostly children, infants and pregnant women.  About 90% of all malaria deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, where a child dies of the disease every 40 seconds.  Of the 3.3 billion people that live in areas at risk of malaria, approximately 225 million become infected with the disease each year.  Some predict that climate change will increase malaria prevalence, as warmer weather breeds larger mosquito populations.

Malaria decreases productivity and increases the risk of poverty for the communities and countries affected.  For example, infection rates are highest during the rainy season, often resulting in decreased agricultural production.  In total, malaria costs sub-Saharan Africa an estimated $12 billion in economic productivity, foreign investment, tourism and trade every year. Malaria also presents a serious strain on public health systems. In sub-Saharan African countries with high-rates of transmission, malaria accounts for 40% of public health expenditure.

The Opportunity

Malaria is an entirely preventable disease with cost-effective solutions for those infected. For just $10, a mosquito bed net specially treated with insecticide can be purchased, distributed, and its recipients educated on its use.  Coupling bed nets with other simple actions, such as indoor house spraying with insecticides, could prevent millions of people from getting sick.  For cases that slip by the bed nets, the most effective medicines, ACTs (artemesinin-based combination therapies) costing roughly $6-10 per treatment, could treat the men, women and children who fall victim to this disease and dramatically reduce the number of deaths from malaria.  The cost of not employing prevention techniques is extremely high: economists believe that malaria is responsible for slowing economic growth up to 1.3% per year in some sub-Saharan African countries.

There has been a dramatic increase in the past few years in terms of the resources available to fight malaria, and these increases have begun to show positive health impacts.  Initiatives such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), the President's Malaria Initiative (PMI), and the World Bank's Malaria Booster Program have significantly expanded coverage of bed nets and access to treatment. The GFATM alone has distributed 160 million bed nets and 142.4 million ACT treatments, while PMI has distributed nearly 20 million bed nets and 40 million treatments.  This support is producing results: with the introduction of a bed net distribution program in Ethiopia, the number of childhood malaria cases reported at clinics fell by 60% and the death rate was halved between 2005 and 2007.  Similar results have been observed in the most endemic parts of Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania, demonstrating that remarkable results are possible if effective measures are scaled-up to levels necessary to achieve their full impact.

Despite encouraging signs of progress, global funding for malaria still remains too low to achieve the widespread impact that is possible. To coordinate and catalyze efforts, the Global Action Plan on Malaria (GMAP) was created by the "Roll Back Malaria Partnership", and announced at the September 2008 UN High-Level Event on the Millennium Development Goals. The GMAP sets out a strategy to eliminate deaths from malaria by 2015, with an interim goal of achieving universal coverage of those in need of bed nets and malaria treatment by 2010. So far, that goal has not been reached and an estimated 50 million additional bed nets are needed in Africa.