WORLD MALARIA DAY on 25 April will commemorate global efforts to control the potentially deadly mosquito-born disease. This World Malaria Day 2011, the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership has adopted the theme ‘Achieving Progress and Impact’ to recognise past efforts but also highlight the significant challenges that still remain, and to emphasise what must be done to reach the Millennium Development Goal of near zero deaths by 2015.
A recent study by the World Health Organisation (WHO) found that many African governments are not allocating enough funds from their annual budgets to health.
In the decade since heads of state of African Union countries vowed to set a target of allocating at least 15 per cent of their annual budgets to improve the health sector, only Rwanda and South Africa have reached the objective, says the WHO.
The organisation adds that 27 countries have increased the proportion of government funds allocated to health and are making progress towards the target. Seven have reduced spending on health, and 12 are spending the same.
Malaria is a deadly mosquito-born disease which took 781,000 million lives in 2009 and afflicts as many as half a billion people in 106 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Malaria plagued Europe and North America as recently as 60 years ago. Simple public health measures were crucial to eliminating the disease and helping those regions achieve growth, prosperity and stability.
Every 45 seconds a child dies from malaria and each of these deaths is avoidable.
For further information, visit rollbackmalaria.org.
