The World Health Organization issued a call for additional funding on Thursday in an effort to combat malaria, which continues to claim the lives of hundreds of thousands of children, mostly in Africa, every year.
In a new report, the UN health agency praised the fact that malaria cases and deaths, which spiked in 2020 as the Covid-19 crisis undermined efforts at prevention and treatment, remained stable at an intransigently high level in 2017.
However, it also brought to light important issues that still need to be addressed, such as the lack of donor funding, the potential impact of climate change, and mutations in the parasite that causes malaria that make it more difficult to treat.
It emphasised that funding needs to more than double, stating that the world was currently “off track” to meet its target of reducing malaria cases and deaths by 90% by 2030.
“We face many challenges, but there are many reasons for hope,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
“By strengthening the response, understanding and mitigating the risks, building resilience and accelerating research, there is every reason to dream of a malaria-free future.”
Africa, which accounts for 96% of malaria deaths worldwide, is where the stakes are especially high.
The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated a number of difficulties in the fight against malaria.
Global malaria deaths decreased sharply between 2000 and 2019, when they stood at 568,000, but they abruptly increased by 10% to 625,000 in 2020, the first pandemic year, according to the report.
Despite the pandemic’s ongoing effects, there were 619,000 fewer deaths from malaria last year.
In contrast, the number of cases of malaria increased last year, from 245 million in 2020 to 247 million, though the increase was less than the 13 million increases seen the year before.
Despite supply chain and logistical difficulties, many countries were able to continue and even increase malaria testing and treatment throughout the pandemic, which was applauded by WHO.
Insecticide-treated bed nets, the primary vector control tool in the majority of nations where malaria is endemic, were distributed by nations in record numbers in 2020 and maintained their high distribution from the previous year.
Rapid diagnostic test distribution to healthcare facilities in malaria-endemic nations reached a record high in 2020 and reached 223 million last year, or roughly the same number as before the pandemic.
The first malaria vaccine, RTS, S, which has already been administered to more than a million children and will be widely available next year, is among the promising future developments.
It is still too early to estimate how many lives the vaccine will save, according to Abdisalan Noor of the WHO’s Global Malaria Programme.
But “we do expect the considerable impact on severe disease and deaths,” he told reporters.
While hailing the efforts made, the WHO stressed that huge challenges remained, including swelling mosquito resistance to the insecticides, insufficient numbers of bed nets, and the greater spread of parasite-bearing mosquitos.
“Malaria is not a disease that stands still,” said Peter Sands, head of the Global Fund, which provides 63 percent of all international financing for malaria programmes.
“The parasites evolve to resist treatments, and mosquitoes adapt to resist insecticides or bite their victims earlier in the day,” he said in a statement.
“Climate change is extending the geographical reach of malaria to regions previously regarded as safe.”
According to the WHO and the Global Fund, there is a huge funding gap that needs to be closed in order to address these issues.
The cost of fighting malaria worldwide in 2017 was $3.5 billion.
Although it was an improvement over the previous two years, WHO reported that it was still far short of the $7.3 billion estimated to be needed globally to keep the global effort on track to eradicate the disease.