Global malaria efforts: Progress made, but challenges loom ahead

Abstract

‘Invest in the future. Defeat malaria,’ the theme of World Malaria Day 2013,1 still struck a chord with the outgoing WHO Global Malaria Program Director, Dr Robert Newman, during the release of the latest World Malaria Report on 11 December 20132 in Washington D.C. Dr Newman stated that ‘the greatest threat to continued success in malaria efforts is financial,’ as the community had less than half of the US$5.1 billion needed annually to ensure universal access to life-saving malaria interventions, including long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs), indoor residual spraying of households with insecticide (IRS), intermittent preventive chemotherapy for pregnant women (IPTp), rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) and arteminisin combination therapies (ACTs). Fellow panelists at the release of the report concurred that while tremendous gains have been made in the past decade in reducing malaria morbidity and mortality, these gains, if the experience of the weakening of national malaria control programs following the abandonment of the Global Malaria Eradication Program in the 1980s is to go by,3 could be easily reversed if the investment to buy the main malaria commodities did not materialize.

With the advent of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in 2002; the …