With concerted efforts and policies, we can stop malaria deaths once and for all

Ten years ago, 40 African heads of state convened in Nigeria and signed the Abuja Declaration, an ambitious plan to cut Africa’s malaria burden in half by the end of 2010.

While Africa has made great progress against malaria over the past decade, we still have much work to do if we are to achieve the goal of reducing deaths caused by this scourge to near zero by 2015.

Malaria still claims the lives of 800,000 Africans annually, and it costs African economies an estimated $12 billion per year in health expenditures and lost productivity.

If Africa is to achieve great things in the 21st century, we can no longer afford to pay these costs.

That is why 30 African heads of state have created the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA) and that is why ALMA convened a special session at the African Union Summit to strengthen Africa’s commitment to beating malaria once and for all.

Over the coming months, ALMA will be focusing on five key areas:

(1) aggressively promoting universal coverage with effective interventions such as LLINs, IPT, RDTs, ACTs, and IRS;

(2) securing sustainable financing for malaria;

(3) promoting the removal of taxes and tariffs on anti-malaria commodities;

(4) promoting a continent-wide ban on artemisinin monotherapies; and

(5) achieving support for the production of anti-malaria commodities by African manufacturers.

Over the past decade, international support from the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis, and Malaria; the US President’s Malaria Initiative and other bilateral donor programmes; the World Bank Booster Programme; and a variety of NGOs and private foundations, has financed the delivery of medicines, rapid diagnostic tests, and more than 350 million mosquito nets to African countries.

With this funding, more mothers, children, and families are sleeping under nets, accessing safe and effective medicines, and living in houses protected by insecticides.

ALMA strongly urges donor nations to replenish the Global Fund and the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) so that vital malaria programmes can continue to help African partners save lives.

Africans know, however, that malaria remains largely our problem, and winning the fight against the disease will require African leadership, African commitment, and African solutions.