What's Going on with Malaria?

World Malaria Day is April 25th. In advance of this, the World Health Organization has issued a report chronicling progress made over the past several years in the fight against this deadly and debilitating disease.

Most malaria deaths (over 1 million worldwide) occur in Africa (85%) so the disease impacts millions living there, compounding problems of poverty and adding to the burdens of human suffering.

The disease is treatable with medicines and preventable but sick people need to have access to medicine (often not the case) and prevention requires things like insecticide-treated bed nets or spraying to kill mosquitoes. And, of course, distribution of both prevention tools and medicine takes money. Funding for anti-malaria campaigns has increased dramatically over the past several years and the WHO report says this is leading to positive change: for example, fewer children are dying of malaria, as reported on here.

This is good news, but as this story highlights there's more to be done and reasons for optimism to be tempered. Spending may have increased but that by itself is not a sign of success: if bed nets or medicines aren't getting to the people who need them then programs need to be re-examined.

- Karol