Notable global progress made against malaria

DAILY NEWS Reporter and agencies

THE world is on course to end deaths from malaria as recent stunning global progress against the disease can attest. This is the view of Mr Martin Edlund, who is the founding member and Chief Executive Officer of Malaria No More, an organization committed to ending deaths from malaria by engaging leaders, rallying the public and delivering lifesaving tools and health education to families across Tanzania and other parts of Africa.

“This was the year we recorded stunning global progress against malaria--an unprecedented 60 percent decline in the rate of deaths and 6.2 million lives saved between 2000 and 2015.

This was the year, as the Millennium Development Goals came to an end, that malaria stood out as key success story, helping to make powerful case that global goal-setting can be an effective way to tackle some of the world’s most pressing problems, said Mr Edlund in an article published on CNN and other health journals this week.

“Until recently, if you asked for the most significant moment in the age-old fight against malaria, the answer would probably be 1897.

That’s when Dr. Ronald Ross (soon thereafter decorated with a Nobel Prize and knighthood) discovered that mosquitoes transmit malaria.

“But many decades from now, when the word ‘malaria’ evokes blank look or distant memory of killer that preyed on the poor and the young, historians will point to 2015,” he said, adding that this was the year, they will say, when the generation that would end the deadliest disease the world has ever known, realized the impossible could be accomplished.

He added that this same year, African leaders adopted a malaria elimination agenda for the continent. That success was followed by another historic action thousands of miles away: 18 heads of state in Asia-Pacific endorsed roadmap to eliminate malaria in their region by 2030.

This was also the year that Bill Gates and Ray Chambers, the United Nations Special Envoy for Malaria, released vision for eradication within generation.

Their report, called “Aspiration to Action: What Will it Take to End Malaria?” was the first ever “business plan” to spell out the tools, strategies and financing needed to end the disease for good.

Speaking to the U.N. General Assembly, US President, Barack Obama called it a moral outrage that “many children are just one mosquito bite away from death,” and urged the world to act.

Reinvigorating the UK’s commitment to the malaria fight, Chancellor, George Osborne announced a 1 billion-pound fund aimed at eradicating malaria and other infectious diseases and declared the “ambition to see the end of this global disease in our lifetimes.