The issue: a preventable, treatable disease
Malaria is a preventable and treatable disease. Yet more than half of the world's population is at risk of malaria and nearly 250 million people become severely ill with it each year.
As a result of the scaling up of key malaria projects, the number of deaths due to malaria had reduced by nearly a million in 2000 to 781,000 in 2009.
Considerable improvements in child and maternal health have also been recorded in African countries where malaria projects have reached high coverage, including Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Zambia.
Between 2000 and 2009, an estimated 384,000 children's lives were saved in 12 countries through widespread distribution of mosquito nets and other malaria prevention tools.
Despite progress, one in five child deaths in Africa is still caused by malaria. All of these are preventable.
Where it doesn't kill, it can have a long term impact on a child's mental and physical development. It is a significant cause of school absenteeism.
Malaria does not just affect children. The health and wellbeing of pregnant women and newborn children is put at risk. Men and women are unable to work for long periods when they become ill.
Households can be thrown back into poverty when faced with the costs of saving a family member’s life. Whole nations suffer lost gross domestic product all as a result of malaria.
Since 2000, nearly one million lives have been saved from this disease. But more than 850,000 are still lost each year.
We have the knowledge, the technical means and the tools to interrupt this cycle of negative effects.
And recent developments in prevention, diagnosis and treatment have brought the prospect of controlling malaria well within our sights.
But far too few people have access to these proven interventions, and weak health systems contribute to this failure.
Other huge challenges have arisen in the global battle against malaria.
Obstacles include delivery of interventions to hard to reach groups, particularly in conflict affected and fragile countries, and emerging drug and insecticide resistance.
Equally challenging is increasing access to effective malaria diagnostics and treatment, particularly in high burden countries that still lag behind and poor regulation of the private sector in many malaria affected countries.
Our commitment: to help halve malaria deaths
Addressing malaria is one of the main priorities of the UK government.
We are committed to helping halve malaria deaths in at least ten of the worst affected countries by 2015.
Our achievements will contribute directly to reaching international targets set out in the Roll Back Malaria Partnership’s 2008 Global Malaria Action Plan and the Millennium Development Goals.
Breaking the Cycle: Saving Lives and Protecting the Future: The UK’s Framework for Results for malaria in the developing world sets out how we will work with other international and UK organisations in partner countries to achieve greater results.
The framework also outlines why the UK is prioritising malaria, why it is excellent value for money, and how we will achieve our commitments.
With a focus on the poor and vulnerable populations in high-burden countries in Africa and Asia, the UK government has four pillars of action:
Improve the quality of services
- Support the implementation of evidence based and context appropriate mixes of cost effective malaria prevention and treatment interventions that are part of broader programmes. Ensure that they deliver maximum health benefits and value for money.
Expand access and increase demand
- Support approaches to ensure all men, women and children are able to access responsive malaria and related health services irrespective of where they live or their ability to pay.
Support innovation and global public goods
- Support strong global technical leadership and effective international organisations that support countries to achieve malaria and broader health goals
- Support coordinated action to address important global needs including tackling resistance, building and sharing evidence and supporting market efficiencies
- Support the development of new prevention, diagnosis and treatment tools and delivery approaches.
Focus on impact and results
- Improve the quality and availability of data on malaria so that results are measurable, transparent and strengthen accountability to communities and the UK public
- Improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the global response through international institutions, partnerships and global civil society.
Breaking the Cycle: Saving Lives and Protecting the Future - The UK's Framework for Results for malaria in the developing world
Affordable medicines
Britain is working with other donors to help make crucial anti-malaria medicines affordable in poor countries where they are needed. The UK has pledged to continue its support of the Affordable Medicines Facility for Malaria (known as AMFm) – a pilot programme across eight countries.
The scheme will now be fully integrated into the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria meaning that in the future more countries can benefit. Following the decision the UK announced its support and will work with other donors to ensure the AMFm transition is fully funded for 2013 enabling continued support to the 8 AMFm pilot countries. UK support of up to £36mn alongside other donor support for 2013 will contribute to saving around 50,000 lives.
Evidence
The UK government has compiled an extensive malaria evidence paper - the Malaria Evidence Overview paper - and conducted wide ranging public and expert consultations (see the right hand panel for links to the consultation).
The paper is based on evidence of what works, what the UK government does best and where we can add most value to what communities, countries and international partners are doing.
It is available publicly in case it is useful to others.
The paper concentrates on regions where DFID has a major presence (primarily Africa and South Asia).
Please note that it is a working paper and it will be updated periodically.
Inevitably, some judgments have to be subjective. If readers consider that important studies have been missed, please let us know so that we can consider these when updating the paper.
Recognising that many of the issues are context-specific, the paper is supplemented by country profiles.
DFID commissioned these for health advisers in our country offices, and again we are making them available publicly.
For an explanation on how the profiles were constructed and matters to consider when using them, please read the introduction in the profiles paper.