RBM Report Anticipates Near-Zero Malaria Deaths in Next Decade
A new report released today by the Roll Back Malaria Partnership (RBM) finds that the world has made remarkable gains against malaria in the past ten years, increasing optimism that an end to the disease is in sight. According to Roll Back Malaria Partnership: A Decade of Partnership and Results, global malaria deaths have dropped by an estimated 38 percent, with 43 countries (11 of them in Africa) cutting malaria cases or deaths by 50 percent or more, reversing the trend of the previous decade and saving over a million lives.
"Only rarely have we seen a public health initiative provide so much return on investment. Thanks to the efforts of the Roll Back Malaria Partners over the past decade, we have a foundation that allows affected countries and communities to reach even greater results in the years to come," said the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
With approximately $5 billion mobilized over this period, coverage has risen across all interventions to prevent and treat malaria, particularly insecticide-treated nets. Enough nets have been distributed to cover nearly 80 percent of the population at risk in sub-Saharan Africa. According to Dr Robert Newman, Director of the World Health Organization's (WHO) Global Malaria Programme, the report's findings are cause for real optimism. "The results of the past decade exceed what anyone could have predicted and prove that malaria control is working. Many of these achievements have occurred in the last five years, which tells us that we are becoming increasingly effective in our ability to tackle this disease."
In the past decade, an additional three countries have eliminated malaria and another 26 are in various stages of the elimination process. It is expected that all of the countries in the WHO European Region will have eliminated malaria by 2015. Roughly half of the world's population is at risk of malaria, a preventable and treatable disease that killed almost 800,000 people in 2009, primarily young children and pregnant women. Over 90 percent of malaria deaths occur in Africa, where the disease also costs the continent an estimated $12 billion annually in lost productivity.
Click here to read the full RBM press release.
Posted September 2011