U.K. Conservative Party Pledges To Spend $1B Annually on Malaria Treatment

The United Kingdom's Conservative Party on Monday pledged to spend about $1 billion annually on treating malaria until the U.N. Millennium Development Goals' target of reducing malaria worldwide has been achieved, BBC News reports. Shadow Chancellor George Osborne made the announcement in Kampala, Uganda, during a three-day visit to the country with Jeffrey Sachs, head of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. According to the Conservatives, the spending is a significant increase on current government spending to treat malaria (BBC News, 1/16). The contribution will account for one-third of what Sachs says is required to combat malaria. "If the whole world spent $3 billion a year you could have, within three years, a comprehensive malaria program that would provide a net for every bed that needs it. And not just that but clinics, treatment, diagnostics, the whole works," Osborne said (Woodward, Guardian, 1/15). He also said, "I hope that other nations follow our lead and join us as we fight to make malaria deaths a thing of the past. Let our generation stand up and say, 'We won the war against malaria.'" Oxfam welcomed the announcement but urged the Conservatives to back the organization's claim that privatized health care is not the solution for developing countries (BBC News, 1/16).

Developed Countries Need To Adopt Simple, Practical Strategies To Combat Malaria, Opinion Piece Says
Governments in developed countries need to recognize that the malaria epidemic is a "full-scale emergency" and "adopt simpler and more practical strategies to help Africa" combat the disease, Sachs writes in a Miami Herald opinion piece. Purchasing insecticide-treated nets and distributing them at no cost to every household in Africa, as well as ensuring the availability of effective treatment in each village, would cost roughly $2.5 billion annually, according to Sachs. He notes that there are two "major obstacles to solving the malaria problem." One is selling ITNs to the poor at discounted prices, as is the practice of organizations such as USAID. The practice "reflects a short-sighted ambition to promote markets rather than the overriding goals of saving lives and removing bottlenecks to long-term economic development," Sachs says. The second obstacle is that donor agencies have established "a complicated purchasing system that has led to years of delay in getting medicines to the villages," rather than ship malaria drugs to countries on the basis of need, Sachs writes. He concludes, "Aid can work wonders if it is practical and directed to those in need. Malaria control can demonstrate this world-saving lesson once again" (Sachs, Miami Herald, 1/15).