MANHICA, Mozambique – The world’s richest man donated $168 million yesterday to fight malaria and urged the world to intensify its battle against a disease that kills more than 1 million people a year.
Hopefully this story will encourage all of us in our fight against malaria.
New York Daily News – http://www.nydailynews.com
“It’s time to treat Africa’s malaria epidemic like the crisis it is,” said Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, handing over in one day more money to fight the disease than all countries combined spend.
“Malaria is robbing Africa of its people and its potential,” Gates told reporters. “Beyond the extraordinary human toll, malaria is one of the greatest barriers to Africa’s economic growth, draining national budgets and deepening poverty.”
Malaria is the biggest killer in Africa alongside HIV/AIDS, killing about 3,000 children a day and costing the world’s poorest continent around $12 billion a year in lost income.
The grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation exceed the $100 million allocated globally for research into the killer disease and will be used to fund research on new malaria prevention strategies for children, new vaccines and new drugs.
Mozambique – one of the world’s poorest countries – also is one of the nations hit hardest by malaria, a parasitic disease transmitted by mosquitoes. Malaria destroys red blood cells and impairs blood flow to vital organs.
Disease on the rise
Medical experts say malaria is making a comeback in Africa for the first time in 20 years, because of an increase in strains resistant to drugs.
Up to 80% of malaria in parts of Africa is now resistant to chloroquine, the cheapest standard drug against the disease. Other effective drugs are too expensive for most people in Africa.
But a Manhica research center funded by Gates may be close to finding a new method for treating infants: the “intermittent preventive treatment.”
This involves administering the anti-malaria drug sulfadoxine pyrimethamine three times during a child’s first year of life.
Early studies showed this treatment could reduce malaria among infants by nearly 60%.
Bill and Melinda Gates jetted to Africa after a visit last week to New York. The couple handed over $51.2 million in that stopover to help create new high schools in the city.
For more information abuot the Vincentian Family Political Action Campaign Against Malaria visit http://www.famvin.org/malaria
