WHO reports progress in malaria control

While international funding to fight malaria has more than doubled in the past three years, producing positive results, much more money is needed, according to a new report from the World Health Organization (WHO).

The World Malaria Report 2009, released Dec. 15, states that international funding commitments to combat the disease totalled US$1.7 billion in 2009, up from US$730 million in 2006. This is still far from the US$5 billion needed every year to effectively treat and prevent malaria around the world, states the report.

"The funding for malaria is at an all-time high right now, which is good news, but it is far below what we need to seriously contemplate global control, much less elimination. And, my fear is that the key source of funds for malaria control, the Global Fund, is starting to lose its ability to attract the donor funding it needs to keep running," Matthew Lynch, director of the Global Program on Malaria at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, wrote in an email.

Still, the increase in funding has allowed for a scale-up in malaria control interventions in some countries. In African countries, for example, 31% of households owned an insecticide-treated net in 2008 compared to 17% in 2006. In 13 African countries that have been hit particularly hard by the disease, net ownership now stands at greater than 50%. The report also notes that more children under age five are sleeping under nets than in previous years.

"The good news in this report is that the problem improves with the integrated and widespread use of the interventions and treatments that expanded funding has enabled. All these efforts have led to real, measurable progress that translates into lower childhood mortality and fewer cases of this disease. However, it is equally clear that controlling malaria risk requires long term, intensive efforts on all fronts," Jeremy Kerr, a biology professor at the University of Ottawa in Ontario, who conducts research on how to identify regions at high risk of malaria, wrote in an email.

Approximately 240 million people were infected with malaria in 2008, according to the WHO, and 863 000 of them died. But of the 108 countries in which malaria is endemic, about a third had less than half of the number of cases of malaria in 2008 than in 2000. However, the countries with the highest rates of malaria, including Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo, were the least successful in lowering their malaria burdens.

"While much remains to be done, the data presented here clearly suggest that the tremendous increase in funding for malaria control is resulting in the rapid scale-up of today’s control tools," WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan said in a press release. "This, in turn, is having a profound effect on health — especially the health of children in sub-Saharan Africa. In a nutshell, development aid for health is working."