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| Malaria is one of the main reasons why Africans miss school or work, entrenching poverty as time and money are spent in hospital, rather than learning or earning. |
The world's richest
couple, Bill and Melinda Gates, and U.S. President Barack Obama are giving
financial backing to global plans to eliminate malaria.
Thomson
Reuters Foundation report continues:
The
Gateses aim to eradicate malaria by 2040 by doubling funding over the next
decade to support the roll out of new products to tackle rising drug resistance
to the disease.
Their
goal of permanently ending transmission of the disease between humans and
mosquitoes is more ambitious than the Sustainable Development Goal of ending
epidemic levels of malaria by 2030.
They
are also supporting a push to create the world's first vaccine against a
parasite.
Here
are four of their arguments for pouring money into the issue:
*
It promises almost a 20-fold return on
investment: Eradication could save 11 million lives and unlock US$2
trillion in economic benefits by 2040 from a healthy, more productive workforce
and health systems that are less burdened by the disease, Gates and the United
Nations say.
They
estimate eradication would cost a fraction of this -- US$90 billion to US$120
billion, making it one of the "best buys" in global development.
*
It's the only way to deal with
drug-resistance: If malaria is not eliminated from drug resistant "hot
spots" in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, multi-drug
resistant malaria is likely to spread worldwide, increasing the cost and
reducing the efficacy of malaria control programmes everywhere.
Donors
have set a goal of eliminating malaria in this Greater Mekong region by 2020.
Tanzania's
health ministry's acting permanent secretary, Nkundwe Mwakyusa, said the
emergence and spread of resistance to artemisinin, the most commonly used drug
against malaria, in Asia was "a major concern".
In
parts of Tanzania, mosquitoes can survive up to 20 times the normal dose of
permethrin, the insecticide used in nets, according to Sophie Weston, a
researcher with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
*
More children in school, less in
hospital: Trials of the Mosquirix vaccine showed that young children in
countries like Kenya fall sick with malaria up to five times in one year.
Malaria
is one of the main reasons why Africans miss school or work, entrenching
poverty as time and money are spent in hospital, rather than learning or earning.
More
than half of the deaths of children under five in Tanzanian health facilities
are due to malaria, according to the United States' President's Malaria
Initiative (PMI).
Malaria
in pregnancy also causes about a quarter of all underweight births in Africa,
according to campaign group Malaria No More.
This
translates to about 100,000 neonatal deaths a year, and underweight children
tend to suffer poor health.
"There's
so much talk about zika and the terrifying effects during pregnancy but just in
sheer scale, malaria outstrips it many times over," said Martin Edlund,
chief executive of Malaria No More.
*
It frees up money for "the next
epidemic": Malaria is no longer the leading cause of death among
children under five in Africa, having been overtaken by acute respiratory
infections, according to PMI.
It
still accounts for a third of outpatient visits on mainland Tanzania, 7.3
million cases a year, it says.
"The
next step is ... to focus also on non-communicable diseases," said Mohamed
Alwani, medical director of Ithani-Asheri Hospital in the Tanzanian town of
Arusha, referring to heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
"The
way I can see it for the last five years or so now, it's going to be the next
epidemic."
The International Centre for Journalists and Malaria No More provided a travel grant for this report
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