PHA-Exchange> Malaria failure noted by World Bank

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....and more yet on the controversy.
Claudio

> Reuters: April 24 2005, By Lesley Wroughton
> 
> WASHINGTON, April 24 (Reuters) - The World Bank announced on
> Sunday it will expand its fight against malaria, one of Africa's
> biggest killers, because global efforts in the past five years
> have failed. The global development lender said in a report that
> the new strategy includes a special task force to ensure that
> anti-malarial efforts are part of its lending programs for poor
> countries. It also includes additional funding to replicate in
> other countries anti-malarial programs that have been successful
> in Brazil, Eritrea, India and Vietnam, the report said. "The
> Global Strategy and Booster Program responds to the inadequacy
> of global efforts to control malaria and the modesty of the
> bank's current efforts relative to its potential," the report
> said. Under the program, the bank will increase distribution of
> bed nets and anti-malarial drugs and provide support to coun-
> tries that lower taxes and tariffs on medicines to treat the
> disease. In an unusually candid statement, the World Bank said
> global efforts in the past five years came up short. "Experience
> in the past five years shows that a pledge of commitment... with
> neither a clearly funded program for malaria control nor the in-
> ternal budget to ensure that the bank's malaria team can func-
> tion effectively, does not lead to success on a large scale,"
> the bank said. "A different and more robust approach is needed
> for success."
> 
> Initial estimates put new funding needs at between $ 500 million
> and $ 1 billion over the next five years, the bank said, adding
> that plans were to raise the money in and outside the bank, in-
> cluding from public and private sectors. Malaria is a mosquito-
> borne disease that kills more than 1 million people a year and
> sickens many more, mostly children under the age of 5, the bank
> estimated. There are 500 million new cases a year, it said.
> 
> EFFECT ON ECONOMIC GROWTH
> "For many countries, controlling malaria is crucial to reduce
> the staggering numbers of mothers and children who die every
> year from this preventable and curable disease," said Jean-Louis
> Sarbib, senior vice president for human development at the bank.
> It is also good for economic growth, Sarbib said. Annual growth
> in gross domestic product per capita in countries where malaria
> occurs averaged 0.4 percent between 1965 and 1990, compared with
> 2.3 percent in the rest of the world, according to bank data.
> 
> The Lancet medical journal said on Friday a global partnership
> of more than 90 organizations and countries to reduce deaths
> from malaria may have done more harm than good. It said rates of
> infection and deaths from the disease had actually risen since
> the Roll Back Malaria partnership, which includes the World Bank
> and World Health Organization, pledged to cut them in 2000. The
> World Bank report said Africa was the worst affected region,
> followed by Southeast Asia, the eastern Mediterranean region,
> and western Pacific. It said malaria had made a resurgence be-
> cause of resistance to traditional first-line treatments such as
> chloroquine and sulfadoxine pyrimethamine. The bank hopes the
> international community could help make the new and effective
> Artemisinin-based combination therapy more available to the poor
> and invest more in research on a possible malaria vaccine, the
> report said. Some scientists argue that the drug combination is
> too expensive for African countries.