'Roll back Malaria' Initiative Expected to Fall Short
Handicapped by a lack of donations, the U.N.-backed Roll Back Malaria campaign will likely fall far short of its goal of halving the number of malaria deaths worldwide by 2010, Agence France-Presse reports today.http://www.unwire.org/News/328_426_23904.asp
U.N.’s Roll Back Malaria Initiative Expected To Fall Short Of Goal
Friday, May 14, 2004
The number of malaria deaths has not dropped since 1998, when the campaign was launched by health activists, governments and international agencies including UNICEF, the World Health Organization, the U.N. Development Program and the World Bank. More than 1 million people die annually, nine-tenths of them in Africa, and most are children under 5.
Prevention measures are cheap, and scientists are quickly working toward a cure for malaria, unlike AIDS, for which drugs are costly and innovation rare.
Money is the last big hurdle to effectively tackling the disease, experts said.
“About $200 million [is] spent on fighting malaria each year, and that includes spending from the Global Fund (to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria),” said Awa Marie Coll-Seck, executive secretary for the Roll Back Malaria mission.
“But we need 10 times that amount. Some things have improved, notably on coordination and agreeing on the best methods for tackling malaria, but on current trends, the spending is not enough to meet all the goals we have set,” she said.
The British Medical Journal recently called Roll Back Malaria a “failing health initiative. The question now is whether the campaign can be saved,” it said.
The WHO has blamed the continued use of older drugs such as chloroquine and sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine, which are useless in most malarial regions because the parasite has built up a resistance to them.
It recommends artemisinin-class combination therapy (ACT), but the drug treatment costs $2 a dose, between 10 and 20 times that of the outdated drugs.
Global demand for ACTs is expected to swell from 20 million adult treatments a year to as high as 200 million next year, an increase that will require additional funding if it is to be met (AFP/Taipei Times, May 14).
One weapon in the war against malaria, the pesticide DDT, will be outlawed along with 11 other industrial chemicals when the U.N. Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) comes into force on Monday, Reuters reports.
Many countries, including South Africa and Ethiopia, still rely on the pesticide to fight malaria, however, and say there is little evidence that DDT is harmful to humans.
“There is still a role for DDT,” said Jim Willis, who heads the chemicals division of the U.N. Environment Program. Willis estimated that about 25 countries would continue using DDT under exemptions from the U.N. ban.
The practice of spraying houses with DDT is common in developing countries, where the death toll from malaria is highest and the disease restricts health budgets and economic growth.
“We have seen no conclusive evidence that it (spraying) has any impact on human health,” said Devanand Moonasar, national malaria program manager of South Africa’s National Department of Health.
“We put very small quantities of DDT on the wall. We spray only under the eaves and also inside the houses of traditional mud structures,” he said, adding that spraying was generally restricted to August through September, when mosquitoes are most prevalent.
Workers spraying DDT wear full protective clothing, however, and the United Nations has been firm in its position on the pesticide and other POPs.
“Of all the pollutants released into the environment every year by human activity, POPs are the most dangerous,” said UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer, adding that more efforts should be put into finding safe alternatives to DDT.
DDT and other POPs are found around the globe, but appear in the highest concentrations in the fatty tissues of people and animals living in the Arctic, where they are swept by ocean currents and winds.
“There is a conflict between the interests of the people living in the Arctic and those who are living in areas where DDT is used,” said Lars-Otto Reiersen, head of the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program.
He said the main source of DDT in the Arctic is Russia, where the chemical is thought to still be in use, perhaps as a crop spray. Russia has signed but not ratified the U.N. treaty on POPs. Most western countries outlawed DDT in the 1970s.
Willis said steps to eliminate DDT worldwide could succeed, but would likely take decades.
Other measures to prevent malaria include clearing stagnant water, the breeding ground of mosquitoes; employing bed nets; using alternative pesticides in restricted areas and developing new medicines (Alister Doyle, Reuters, May 14).
Tags: Health, Malaria