"The way I can see it for the last five years or so now, it's going to be the next epidemic."
The world's richest couple, Bill and Melinda Gates, and U.S. President Barack Obama are giving financial backing to global plans to eliminate malaria.
The
Gateses aim to eradicate malaria by 2040 by doubling funding over the
next decade to support the roll out of new products to tackle rising
drug resistance to the disease.
Their goal of
permanently ending transmission of the disease between humans and
mosquitoes is more ambitious than the Sustainable Development Goal of
ending epidemic levels of malaria by 2030.
They are also supporting a push to create the world's first vaccine against a parasite.
Here are four of their arguments for pouring money into the issue:
*
It promises almost a 20-fold return on investment: Eradication could
save 11 million lives and unlock $2 trillion in economic benefits by
2040 from a healthy, more productive workforce and health systems that
are less burdened by the disease, Gates and the United Nations say.
They
estimate eradication would cost a fraction of this -- $90 billion to
$120 billion, making it one of the "best buys" in global development.
*
It's the only way to deal with drug-resistance: If malaria is not
eliminated from drug resistant "hot spots" in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar,
Thailand and Vietnam, multi-drug resistant malaria is likely to spread
worldwide, increasing the cost and reducing the efficacy of malaria
control programmes everywhere.
Donors have set a goal of eliminating malaria in this Greater Mekong region by 2020.
Tanzania's
health ministry's acting permanent secretary, Nkundwe Mwakyusa, said
the emergence and spread of resistance to artemisinin, the most commonly
used drug against malaria, in Asia was "a major concern".
In
parts of Tanzania, mosquitoes can survive up to 20 times the normal
dose of permethrin, the insecticide used in nets, according to Sophie
Weston, a researcher with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical
Medicine.
* More children
in school, less in hospital: Trials of the Mosquirix vaccine showed that
young children in countries like Kenya fall sick with malaria up to
five times in one year.
Malaria is one of the main
reasons why Africans miss school or work, entrenching poverty as time
and money are spent in hospital, rather than learning or earning.
More
than half of the deaths of children under five in Tanzanian health
facilities are due to malaria, according to the United States'
President's Malaria Initiative (PMI).
Malaria in
pregnancy also causes about a quarter of all underweight births in
Africa, according to campaign group Malaria No More.
This translates to about 100,000 neonatal deaths a year, and underweight children tend to suffer poor health.
"There's
so much talk about zika and the terrifying effects during pregnancy but
just in sheer scale, malaria outstrips it many times over," said Martin Edlund, chief executive of Malaria No More.
*
It frees up money for "the next epidemic": Malaria is no longer the
leading cause of death among children under five in Africa, having been
overtaken by acute respiratory infections, according to PMI.
It still accounts for a third of outpatient visits on mainland Tanzania, 7.3 million cases a year, it says.
"The next step is ... to focus also on non-communicable diseases,"
said Mohamed Alwani, medical director of Ithani-Asheri Hospital in the
Tanzanian town of Arusha, referring to heart disease, diabetes and
cancer.
"The way I can see it for the last five years or so now, it's going to be the next epidemic."
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