Posts Tagged ‘Malaria’

This Sunday is World Malaria Day. A day to celebrate all of the positive action that has been made towards the reduction and eradication of this disease (which still infects around 250m people per year), and a day to concentrate efforts towards further progress to the ambitious global targets. Visit the World Malaria Day website to find out more and show your support this weekend http://www.worldmalariaday.org/home_en.cfm

According to Andrew Jack in today’s FT special report on “Combating Malaria”, this year will mark the most hopeful World Malaria Day to date.

Why?

Well, for one Ray Chambers (the UN special envoy for malaria) is apparently confident that efforts are on track towards an ambitious mosquito net distribution programme which will complete during 2010.  He quotes “today we know we can achieve the goal of universal coverage of nets by the end of this year and near zero deaths from the disease by 2015.”

Evidence also supports the fact that far more effective tools for prevention and treatment have become available and distribution methods have been improved. In addition, the pipeline of technologies is growing with more effective medicines, improved diagnostic tests and possible vaccines emerging.

However, on top of this it is undoubtedly sophisticated and wide-spread advocacy and communications programmes which have really helped shape this positive environment. Comic Relief for example put a huge emphasis on malaria, dedicating the money raised by the 2009 celebrity Kilimanjaro climbers to the disease and investing in on the ground expertise (through Malaria Consortium and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria). In addition, this year we have the mighty football world cup in South Africa supporting the cause which will provide a truly global platform.

While there is certainly still far to go, it is exciting that World Malaria Day will this year be celebrated by the malaria community with such positivity and confidence. Visit the World Malaria Day website to find out more and show your support this weekend http://www.worldmalariaday.org/home_en.cfm

Written by: Guest Blogger, Professor Alan Fenwick, Professor of Tropical Parasitology at Imperial College

Professor Alan Fenwick is the director of the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College, London

The economic downturn is proving to be difficult for many people in UK as jobs are lost and savings no longer earn the interest that people have been accustomed to. Charities are suffering because corporate giving and personal donations are being reduced or even withdrawn. My personal interest is to raise funds to allow children in rural Africa to receive treatment for a number of parasites which debilitate, disfigure and prevent children from attending school and receiving even a basic education. Our target is to get safe, effective, drugs out to the rural poor. The drugs are donated by the pharmaceutical companies which make them. We assist the countries to apply for these drugs, and then deliver them on an annual basis through schools and communities to those children infected with nasty worms. It is the best buy in public health, but it is proving to be a hard sell.

We need relatively little money to deliver the drugs to where they are needed, and to educate the people in poor rural areas on better hygienic practices. We can treat schoolchildren effectively for just 33 pence per child per year - £250 will allow us to treat a school of 750 children. However our dream to get the treatments out on a regular basis to over 200 million school aged children across Africa will cost about £66 million per year.

But where will the money come from? Everyone is understandably hanging on to what they have got. The G8 have said they will help, and that includes the British Government, and we hope this funding will come through. Meanwhile we rely on smaller donations to treat the worst affected children.

We have recently participated in the production of a series of films which were shown on BBC World. We will use any publicity we can get to help the poorest people who have become forgotten in our troubled times.  Please tune in to www.rockhopper.tv and watch what we do. The film is called “Distant Places, Forgotten Lives.”

Friday sees the twelfth Red Nose Day celebrated in Britain for Comic Relief.

Last year’s Red Nose Day smashed all records, raising a massive £40.2m. I will be intrigued to see whether this year’s event will come anywhere close to meeting that total, given that it will be the first large scale live telethon fundraising event in the UK since the recession hit.

We’ve already seen a vast amount of publicity in the run up to the event, mobilising the population to take part. The messages of Comic Relief have always juxtaposed the light-hearted with the serious, but this year - in my mind - the tone and messaging seem very different to previous years. I’ve noticed that the strategy is always to reserve the hardcore appeal films until the night, but this year there is little mention of money, charity and especially Africa. Take for example, the coverage achieved surrounding the expedition that nine celebrities embarked upon up Mount Kilimanjaro. When I searched for coverage around the expedition 99% of my results were surrounding the gruelling climb, Fearne Cotton missing her lip gloss and Ashley Cole misbehaving back home. There is less mention of malaria and Tanzania.

Undoubtedly the recession will have fed into communications strategies and will have been thought of as a major challenge for organisers for many months. It is a tough ask to promote large scale giving, especially for overseas projects when we are faced daily with headlines of more redundancies, rising UK poverty rates and economic turmoil. Could this be why the focus of this year’s event seems to have resulted as more inward looking than previous years?

With this in mind, I’ll be interested to see how things play out on the night. Will appeal films have a new focus to better suit the attitudes of our recession hit society? Will the recession be mentioned? And will the focus fall more on the UK than Africa? I think that Comic Relief 2009 will be the ultimate litmus test gauging British society’s attitudes towards the developing world in times of recession. I will be very intrigued to see whether the nation’s generosity will stand up in adverse times. Let’s see whether we’ll come anywhere near to meeting that pre-recession £40.2m.

I’m really excited about the launch of the Dot Org. blog as it joins the community of people who are passionate about using innovative communications to help improve people’s lives around the world.

In the fast paced and largely impersonal metropolis that I call home, I hardly experience community in a traditional way any more. But it is the human need for community and this current condition that I think has driven the digital revolution that we are living in now - something you’ll probably hear a lot about from me!

And it is community that lies at the heart of global health. We are currently working on an advocacy project around the BBC World News documentary series Survival which features some of the worlds biggest killers and causes of morbidity, like malaria, TB, pneumonia, maternal health and child survival. All are treatable and preventable, and Survival highlights how communities themselves are working to fight them and starting to succeed. Community engagement is essential to the implementation and the success of any programme and this rings true from health interventions to PR 2.0. People want to be a part of something, and will listen to those they know and trust - and we need to help influence this.

So welcome to our community - we look forward to your comments and questions and invite you to Advance to GO! and let us know what you think!

Tina Fey, make up artists and $150,000 on a new wardrobe. Amidst the gags and sketches that are admittedly largely directed at the Sarah ‘the Pitbull’ Palin, it’s easy to forget that next week’s US Presidential election will have a profound impact on the whole world, not just those with the right (if not the will) to vote. Undeniably, the outcome will have a significant influence in shaping the global health agenda for the next four years.

At first glance, both candidates have a tough act to follow. The Bush administration has committed unprecedented sums of money to tackle HIV/AIDS, malaria and even neglected tropical diseases through PEPFAR, the President’s Malaria Initiative and the President’s Initiative to Combat Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Dig a little deeper and the picture is not quite so impressive. Despite committing more than $49 billion to combat these diseases over the next five years, the US contribution to Official Development Assistance (ODA) at 0.16% of GNI still falls woefully short of the 0.7% target agreed with other OECD nations. Moreover, many believe that the $18.8 billion spent by PEPFAR to date has been undermined by an insistence of placing the emphasis on treatment over prevention, circumventing the Global Fund for a large proportion of funding and for putting ideology ahead of evidence-based practices (at least 33% of funds committed to HIV prevention programmes must be allocated to abstinence only programmes).

Despite these criticisms, PEPFAR has expanded (or more accurately, contributed to the expansion of) antiretroviral treatment for HIV infected people to cover almost 2 million people, and the Bush administration would have you believe that George Bush’s contribution to global health and Africa will be his most noteworthy legacy.

So how do John McCain and Barack Obama fare when it comes to global health? Well, their policies are analysed at Health 08 and by the ONE campaign, but to sum up: John McCain = more of the same, Barack Obama = double the commitment and no ideological restrictions. On paper, at least, there is one clear winner when it comes to global health…

Either way, the contributions that both candidates would make to global health, if elected, will dwarf those made by the rest of the world. Such is the size of the US economy, that even when they are not being generous (relatively), the Americans are being very generous indeed (absolutely). The incumbent President will also take the helm at a critical juncture, on the back of renewed optimism in the global health community, but in the middle of a global financial crisis that will not only increase pressure to make domestic issues a priority but also threatens to increase the risk of malnutrition as food prices and oil prices continue to rise.

But one question remains. What would the Pitbull do, if she were President?

‘Exciting. People are dying out there. I don’t think exciting is the word I’d choose to describe it” The words of the US President on hearing the news of a technological breakthrough that could save the world. Bush? Clinton? No, Bill Pullman in the 1996 sci-fi blockbuster ‘Independence Day‘. He was talking about unravelling the technology of the alien invaders but he could easily have been talking about the Global Malaria Action Plan that was unveiled recently.

The global health community – if not excited – is cautiously optimistic about the road map outlined in the plan. The plan sets bold and ambitious targets – to eliminate and eventually eradicate malaria – neither of which is technically possible in endemic countries using existing tools. But that misses the point. It is the use of the words ‘eliminate’ and ‘eradicate’ – words that will resonate with policy makers around the world – that is likely to galvanise the political commitment of leaders in both endemic countries and donor countries to end the scourge of malaria. Right now, that is what is most needed.

The clear message of intent - that hitherto has been absent - owes much to a call to action made by Bill and Melinda Gates in October 2007, to chart a course for malaria eradication. The Global Malaria Action Plan does exactly that, but there is a long and challenging journey ahead.

Malaria is one of the ‘Big 3′ along with HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. If global health were the music industry, they would be U2, Madonna and Jay Z, and the Global Fund would be Live Nation. It was fitting, therefore, for a rock star – Bono, who else? - to be present at the launch of the Plan, as an extra $3 billion was committed to fighting malaria. Some would argue that – like the Live Nation roster of artists – the resources committed to the Big 3 is quite out of keeping with their impact, and that there are other, more deserving recipients.

There are signs at least, that the malaria community is recognising that it is not the only show in town. The plan includes much-needed capacity building and health systems strengthening that will not only improve the delivery of malaria interventions but will allow integration with broader global health initiatives.

However, those charged with implementing the plan would do well to read up on the eradication of smallpox - to date the only infectious disease that has successfully been eradicated – and the importance of strong leadership in achieving that goal.

People are still dying out there –  at least a million die each year from malaria - and it remains to be seen how quickly these extra resources can be translated into measurable progress. In the meantime, the benefits of two of the key technological innovations that are fuelling this optimism and ambition – artemisin-based combination therapies (ACTs) and long-lasting insecticide treated bednets –  are illustrated in this short film from Uganda, part of the ‘Survival’ series of documentaries on global health that is airing this quarter on BBC World News.