Malaria Day in the Americas 2009
Friday happens to be Malaria Day in the Americas 2009, and while malaria is not much of a problem here in the United States, it does affect our neighbors to the south and is a major problem in Africa. So we thought we’d take the time to acquaint you with the issues.
Malaria kills more than one million people a year, most of them children. (Most of the remaining fatalities are pregnant women.) Somewhere between 350 million and 500 million people are infected with malaria annually, at great economic cost, especially to families, since breadwinners are often unable to work for weeks, even if they eventually recover.
The main efforts being taken to combat malaria involve encouraging the use of bed nets in malaria-infested regions, particularly long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets, which are the state of the art, and combating antimalarial resistance. So far, resistance to antimalarials —the ineffectiveness of malaria medications due to evolving strains of malaria that are not killed by them—has cost us the use of the cheapest and all but the very best antimalarial medications. Indeed, the World Health Organization (WHO) has mandated that artemisinin, the best of the antimalarials available currently, not be given as a monotherapy. In other words, artemisinin must be adminstered with at least one other antimalarial drug to comply with WHO guidelines.
In the Americas, targets for 2015 include:
- Decreasing annual malaria cases from approximately 1.15 million in the year 2000 to 575,000 by 2010 (50% reduction) and to 287,000 by 2015 (additional 25% reduction)
- Reducing malaria deaths from 348 in the year 2000 to less than 174 (50% reduction) by 2010 and to less than 87 (additional 25% reduction) by 2015
The effectiveness of long-term malaria control is governed by the strength of health systems. Strong health systems can deliver effective, safe, high-quality interventions when and where they are needed and assure access to reliable health information and effective disease surveillance. At the same time, integrating malaria treatment, prevention and surveillance into existing health programs and activities in endemic countries will ensure that funding earmarked for malaria control contributes to the development, expansion and continuous improvement of national health systems.
While the malaria situation in Africa is particularly dire, in the Americas there have been some successes since the turn of the century. Specifically, between 2000 and 2008, we have seen
- a 50.4% reduction of malaria cases in the region
- Approximately a 77% reduction in malaria mortality
- Seven countries have witnessed a greater than 75% reduction in annual malaria cases
- Five countries have shown a reduction in annual malaria cases between 50% and 74%
- Six countries have decreased annual malaria cases by less than 50%
Just in the Americas, the investment needed for malaria control and elimination are $227 million in 2009 and $261 million in 2010.
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