Groups Launch $11B Malaria Control Plan
A group of government and business leaders on Friday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, launched a plan that aims to increase malaria prevention and treatment efforts in the 30 African countries most affected by the disease, the Financial Times reports. The plan, called the Malaria Implementation Support Team, will require $11 billion in funding over the next five years, according to a report from Malaria No More and McKinsey & Company. The plan -- which will include efforts to conduct indoor insecticide spraying, distribute insecticide-treated nets and increase access to artemisinin-based combination therapies -- signifies a "fresh effort to reinvigorate the fight to eradicate malaria," the Times reports.
The team will be chaired by Ethiopia's minister of health, the director-general of the World Health Organization and Malaria No More. The team will collaborate with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; the Roll Back Malaria Partnership; UNICEF; and the World Bank, according to the Times. Global Fund Board Chair Rajat Gupta of McKinsey said that these types of initiatives have not been successful in the past because the groups involved "represented the interests and politics of the organizations they came from and were not answerable to the common task in hand." Gupta added, "We have pretty much all the tools to aggressively control the disease and reduce or eliminate mortality, but it had not been done" (Jack, Financial Times, 1/24).
The report is available online.
