5 May 2005
WHO, UNICEF Reports Detail; Liberia Not Exception
More people are accessing prevention and treatment services for malaria, sparking hope that the number of people who become sick and die from malaria will begin to decline.
However challenges remain to reduce the burden of the disease, which still kills one million people every year, most of those in Africa, according to the 2005 World Africa Malaria Report.
The report, released by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) finds that progress has been made in preventing and treating malaria since 2000.
It also finds out that more countries are introducing the newest medicine to treat malaria, and that more people are receiving long-lasting insecticide treated mosquito nets through innovative new programs.
The report analyzes malaria data collected through 2004 and represents the most comprehensive effort ever made to present the available evidence on malaria worldwide.
Many countries are moving forward with malaria control programs, and even those with limited resources and a heavy malaria burden now have a better opportunity to gain ground against this disease," said Dr. LEE Jong-Wook, Director General of WHO.
"However, proven interventions such as insecticide-treated nets, and the latest artemisinin-based combination therapies must reach many more people before we can have a real impact on Malaria." Due to the difficulties involved in gathering information about malaria in most affected countries and because those countries have intensified their efforts only in the past few years, it is too soon to measure the impact on illness and death of the recent expansion of malaria control strategies, the report states.
A measurable effect should become apparent about three years after widespread implementation.
According to the joint report by WHO and UNICEF, a number of counties are now engaged in intense anti-malarial campaigns. "In particular, more and more people are protected with insecticide-treated nets - a highly effective method of malaria prevention," the reports noted.
In Africa, all countries reporting on nets collectively had a 10-foldd increase in the number of insecticide-treated nets distributed over the last three years.
At present, malaria remains the infectious disease that takes more lives of children in Africa than any other - three times as many as HIV/AIDS infection," said Ann M. Veneman, Executive Director of UNICEF. "If we are going to dramatically stop child deaths in the next decade, we need to put more focus on combating malaria."
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