WHO: Africa needs 10-fold more cash to fight malaria

Africa needs up to $2.5 billion a year to fight malaria, or 10 times the donor funds pledged for a campaign against the disease, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

The mosquito-borne disease kills more than 1 million people a year around the world—more than 90 percent of them in sub-Saharan Africa, the WHO said in a statement issued from its regional office in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo.

Since its establishment in 2002, the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) has approved $371 million to fight malaria and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has announced three major grants in 2003 totaling $168 million, the WHO said.

While pledged donor funds were less than WHO’s estimates, the two incentives have provided additional resources for malaria prevention and control in the region over the last three years, it said.

WHO experts writing in the organization’s Communicable Diseases Bulletin had estimated an annual target budget of $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion was needed to fight malaria in Africa, the statement said.

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