The Battle against Malaria. A Victory that is within Reach

Having remained silent about, and absent from, the struggle against malaria for a long period, the international community finally roused itself in the late 1990s and began to combat the disease on a “massive” scale. It is an illness entirely eradicated in the advanced countries, but one that still rages in poor ones, with almost a million dying each year, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa. It attacks those who are most vulnerable: namely, women, the under-fives, those with HIV/AIDS and displaced people.
Malaria is a “disease of poverty”, as Michèle Barzach and Sylvie Chantereau stress here. “As an individual and collective factor of social destabilization”, it hits the countries it affects hard in both economic and social terms. “Malaria can account for more than 50% of the expenditure of households coping with it directly”, note the authors. It is estimated to cost “sub-Saharan Africa more than 12 billion dollars in lost GDP”.
Yet it is an avoidable disease, thanks to some effective treatments and means of prevention, observe Michèle Barzach and Sylvie Chantereau. This is something the international community has realized, having for some ten years now carried on an unprecedented struggle against malaria, with funding that has risen from less than 100 million dollars in 2003 to 2 billion in 2009. In this context, the authors assert without hesitation that “all the conditions are in place today for malaria to be effectively controlled in all the affected areas of the globe, and even eliminated in some countries”. They stress, however, that the current research and funding effort has to be maintained if this is to happen.