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The World Health Organization (WHO) is ringing the alarm bell on Monday. In the 2020 report on the disease, released this morning, experts note the best: the annual death toll is now around 400,000, up from 700,000 deaths per year in the early 2000s.
But this year 2020 marked by Covid-19 could break the progress of recent years.
Interruption of diagnostics, distribution of mosquito nets, reduced access to drugs … Covid-19 has in fact completely stopped the fight against malaria this year.
The WHO regional director in Africa fears this will have long-term effects. “This report on malaria in the world in 2020 (…) tells us that we will probably not reach the 2030 targets of the global strategy against malaria “, insists docteur Moeti Matshidiso.
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This 2030 strategy predicted 90% fewer infections and deaths than 2015 figures. 35 African countries were to be completely malaria-free.
But health systems still face shortcomings. There is no money: three billion dollars were spent last year in the fight against malaria. This is practically double (5.7 billion) that would have been needed.
Tens of thousands more dead
“There will certainly be many more deaths from malaria than the number of people we estimate have died from Covid-19,” Dr. Moeti Matshidiso feared. The WHO speaks of 20,000-100,000 more deaths.
“Why does it seem so ordinary and normal that these hundreds of thousands of children, mostly, and others, die of malaria every year?” do not give away the visitor Matshidiso. “Why don’t we ring the alarm bell? (…) Additional resources must be invested (…) to make it so scandalous that a perfectly preventable and treatable disease continues to kill 300,000 or even 400,000 people every year.”
Concrete proposals
A vaccine is currently being tested in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi
Essential investments. All the more so since the WHO fears that the economic effects of the Covid-19 crisis will also affect health systems in Africa. So we need money and real roadmaps against malaria, with concrete measures.
“For example, you can use data. Precise and localized data”, explains Dr Abdourahmane Diallo, president of the RBM partnership, a global platform for coordinating action against malaria.he does. “They are at the heart of the fight against malaria. It is the only way for countries to adapt their approaches to their local context, to innovate and to properly target and optimize their limited resources.”
The solutions therefore exist. Now it takes willpower and money to make them happen. A sign of hope perhaps: a vaccine is currently being tested in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi. Half a million children have already been vaccinated.
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