Translating Malaria eradication into reality

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A professor of Epidemiology and Medical Parasitology, University of Basel, Marcel Tanner, has noted that there are still an estimated 219 million cases of malaria every year, causing more than half a million deaths.

The man, who is also the Director emeritus of the Swiss Tropical & Public Health Institute, stated that despite this gloom, multi-factorial and integrated processes could eventually make malaria eradication a reality.

While commending the series of global efforts in the past decade that had halved the number of deaths due to malaria, he argued that malaria remains the most important parasitic disease, being a major threat in the world and leading to some 600,000 deaths per year.



Writing in a forum article, during which experts working on malaria research and control were asked to discuss the ways in which malaria might eventually be eradicated; he submitted that malaria's huge economic burden calls for intense global action.

This is more necessary to reduce and eliminate this intolerable burden for the global benefit, he further argued.

Tanner and other experts, in their collective views highlight the challenges and opportunities inherent in malaria, and then explained how malaria is a disease of poverty, and malaria control and elimination is a contribution to effective and sustained poverty alleviation.

Their experts conclusion was that:
"Every year, World Malaria Day forces all concerned to look at where we came from, where we are and what still needs to be done. Joint action over the past decade has led to an impressive impact: malaria infection rates have been cut in half and 4.3 million lives have been saved.

"Fifty-five countries are on track to reach the World Health Assembly target of a 75 % reduction in their malaria burden. Although,  these huge gains are impressive, they remain fragile if the momentum of the joint action cannot be maintained.

"Clearly, not keeping the momentum leads to the resurgence of malaria, as we have experienced in numerous previous elimination efforts at national or subnational levels.

"It is in this context that the new, jointly established Global Technical Strategy (GTS) by the WHO Global Malaria Programme (GMP) was approved by the World Health Assembly in 2015. Complementary to this, the follow-up version of the Global Malaria Action Plan by the Roll Back Malaria Partnership (RBM), called Action and Investment to defeat Malaria 2016-2030 (AIM) -for a malaria-free world, was also launched in 2015.

"It is under the umbrella of these two guiding documents that the global health community, leaders and decision-makers together with national programme managers aim at keeping the momentum towards further success and the goals as provided in the WHO/GTS and RBM/AIM."