Research against malaria falters because of lack of money

Fight against malaria falters because of lack of money: Hundreds of thousands more malaria victims

18/12/2012

In the fight against the tropical disease malaria, there is still no victory in sight - this sad result comes from the World Health Organization's (WHO) World Health Report recently published in World Health Organization (WHO) and illustrates this with alarming figures: more than 600,000 people die every year on the planet insidious disease, mostly girls and boys under five, about every minute falls victim to a malaria child in Africa.

That the numbers are immense, was also a study by US scientists who published their own data on malaria victims in 2010 earlier this year and who significantly exceeded the figures of the WHO. The WHO had 655,000 deaths, according to researchers led by Christopher Murray of the University of Washington in Seattle, but the death toll in 2010 was 1.2 million (twice as many malaria deaths).

Danger of increasing drug resistance
According to WHO Director Margaret Chan, "a major problem in dealing with the disease is increasing resistance of malaria drugs and insect repellents to Anopheles mosquitoes". Experts would even fear that "in Cambodia and Thailand, resistance to one of the most important antimalarial drugs could develop". This is called „artemisinin“, a phytochemical used worldwide to treat malaria. This would take more effort, according to Chan „avoid a medical disaster in the future ".

Illness could be controlled more by increasing the financial resources
From the point of view of the WHO, however, this is not an immutable state - the disease transmitted primarily by the so-called malaria mosquitoes in tropical climates is one „tragedy“, However, according to Margaret Chan, this could be overcome with sufficient financial resources. But exactly these financial resources are currently lacking.

It all looked so promising: In 2001, a working group with representatives of the UN and the World Bank had the so-called „Millennium Development Goals“ Among other things, it was intended, inter alia, to halt the spread of malaria and other serious diseases and reverse the trend by 2015. However, according to WHO, mankind is still miles away from this goal - instead, the fight against the infectious disease malaria has stalled, by 2015, this target can no longer be achieved.

14 countries require particularly strong support
According to the WHO report, the situation is especially severe in Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in the Asian region of India - but according to the report, there are a total of 14 countries in which malaria is raging and in total about 80% of all Malaria infections occur. And precisely in these countries, according to WHO, the fight against the disease must be strengthened. Because even if the number of new infections could be reduced by 75 percent in about 50 nations, this success offers only limited reason to enjoy - but here it is about countries in which only 3% of all malaria cases worldwide occur.

But in order to be successful in the group of 14 countries, it takes money. According to the WHO, in 2000, not even $ 100 million was available worldwide. In the last 10 years, there was a significant increase in spending, which according to the WHO resulted in 1.1 million people being saved from death by malaria globally.

Increase in financial resources, according to WHO indispensable
While that may sound good and the right way, this development seems to stagnate. From an expert's point of view, although at a high level - but not enough to fundamentally change the situation. From the point of view of the WHO, it is necessary to build on the upswing of the years after the millennium. While "many countries have increased funding for malaria control from their own resources, in 2011 the total available funds stagnated at $ 2.3 billion - less than half of what is needed," the WHO said According to the WHO experts, by 2020, 5.1 billion dollars (3.9 billion euros) would be needed annually.

In order to close the gap here and to be more pro-active against malaria and help affected people, says WHO Director Margaret Chan „an urgent need to identify new sources of funding to increase aid, sustain efforts to control malaria, and protect investments over the past decade.“ It would have to „new ways to expand existing funds“, said the director in the foreword to the World Malaria Report.

Money that is urgently needed - among other things for mosquito nets, which are indispensable for protection against the malaria mosquitoes, for which, however, according to the WHO, not enough financial resources would be available long ago. The number of nets, for example, has fallen from 145 million in 2010 to 66 million in the current year, especially in African countries where the infectious disease would rage the most. so again "more people are exposed to the potentially deadly disease".

Germany's role as a financier
Germany's part in the fight against the disease consists mainly in financing the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM). This global fund is a financial instrument that operates in 140 countries worldwide and is one of the most important tools to combat these diseases. So far, the Federal Republic of Germany had invested here annually 200 million euros, but the payments had been temporarily stopped after corruption cases had become known.

However, this should change again: So announced Dirk Niebel (FDP), Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, in November this year, that Germany would participate in the period 2012 to 2016 again with a total of one billion euros. (Sb)

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Picture: Gerd Altmann