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April 2011

New tools needed in fight against malaria, opinion piece says

April 27, 2011 -- There have been major successes in malaria prevention and control in recent years with tools such as bed nets, indoor residual spraying, more effective medicines, and preventive treatment during pregnancy, Global Health Council President and CEO Jeffrey Sturchio and Medicines for Malaria Venture CEO David Reddy write in a Huffington Post opinion piece. They add, “These successes have been a collaborative effort of government, multilateral, and nongovernment organizations and the private sector. But much of the leadership and funding has come from the US Government, through the President's Malaria Initiative, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. These donors have helped drive an 18-fold increase in malaria funding between 2003 and 2010.”

Despite these successes, “malaria remains a deadly killer, threatening half the world's population and taking nearly 800,000 lives a year. Malaria strikes society's most vulnerable, especially children under the age of five—85 percent of malaria deaths fall into this group –and pregnant women.” The authors add that new tools are needed to fight malaria worldwide because of emerging challenges such as drug resistance. Fortunately, product development partnerships “have developed and delivered antimalarial medicines and are making headway in the development of vaccines and rapid diagnostic tests. However, as the death and disability toll makes clear, much more needs to be done if we are to defeat malaria once and for all.

“In this long war to eradicate malaria we are at a tipping point. Malaria has been eliminated or is close to elimination in several countries. To stop efforts before the last parasite has been defeated is to lose the enormous gains already made.” They conclude, “We need to scale up what is already working and continue to develop new antimalarial tools. Coverage and utilization of existing prevention and diagnostic measures need to be sustained and expanded. The [Roll Back Malaria] RBM report cited above estimates that an additional 3 million lives … could be saved by 2015 if the world continues to invest in tackling the disease.”

Additionally, the ONE blog recently featured Dr. Christian Loucq, director of the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI) and Dr. John Lusingu, a malaria vaccine researcher at an MVI trial site in Tanzania. Both spoke about the need for a malaria vaccine and the exciting progress the most advanced vaccine candidate, RTS,S, has made in recent years. Dr. Loucq reinforced the importance of research and development for new tools for malaria and other diseases, saying, " Let me quote Rob Newman from the WHO, who I think said it best: 'The research of yesterday gave us the tools of today and the research of today will give us the tools we will need tomorrow.' We already see problems of resistance in malaria and other diseases; if we don’t invest today in new tools, we will have a bigger problem down the road. Some of the best results we’ve achieved in the field of infectious diseases — smallpox eradication, the elimination of polio in many countries — those results have all been the victory of vaccines. Today, we still have big challenges that need vaccines.” See the links below for more information.

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