Former Ghana President Calls For Funding to Fight Malaria, HIV in Children

Former President of Ghana Jerry Rawlings will ask African finance ministers at a World Bank meeting this week to devote money to fighting diseases that affect African children, including HIV and malaria. Rawlings, who will be speaking at the Global Partners to Roll Back Malaria conference being held at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., stressed the economic and humanitarian importance of fighting malaria in Africa. "One child loses his or her life every 40 seconds. Some of the progress we could be making in development is being stunted by malaria. ... Malaria has done too much damage and until it was overtaken by AIDS, it was claiming more lives than AIDS, leprosy and measles combined," he said. David Alnwick, a World Health Organization official, said that the economic cost and lost productivity from malaria alone costs about $12 billion a year. The WHO is seeking funding from public and private sources to provide insecticides, more advanced drugs and epidemic control strategies to fight the disease. Children comprise about 600,000 of the one million people in sub-Saharan Africa who die from malaria each year (Boustany, Washington Post, 4/18).