Health experts’ push to eradicate malaria by 2050

Global health experts say malaria can be eradicated within a generation.

Municipal workers spraying mosquitoes at a school near the Indian city of Hyderabad. Picture: AFP

Global health experts say ­malaria can be eradicated within a generation and the World Health Organisation should not shy away from this “goal of epic proportions” which needs ­a ­further $US2bn ($2.9bn) to achieve.

In a report that contradicts the conclusions of a WHO-led malaria review last month, 41 specialists say a future free of malaria — one of the world’s oldest and deadliest diseases — can be achieved as early as 2050.

To meet that target governments, scientists and public health leaders need to inject more money and innovation into fighting the disease and the mosquitoes that carry it, the ­report says.

It said the goal was something that would require “ambition, commitment and partnership like never before”.

“For too long, malaria eradication has been a distant dream, but now we have evidence that malaria can and should be eradicated by 2050,” said Richard Feachem, director of the Global Health Group at the University of California, San Francisco, who co-chaired a review of malaria eradication commissioned by The Lancet journal. “We must … challenge ourselves with ambitious targets and commit to the action needed to meet them.”

The Lancet-commissioned view comes a few weeks after the WHO published its own report on whether malaria can be wiped out, concluding that eradication cannot be achieved any time soon, and that setting unrealistic goals with unknown costs and endpoints could lead to “frustration and backlashes”.

The WHO report said the priority now should be to lay the groundwork for future eradication “while guarding against the risk of failure that would lead to the waste of huge sums of money (and) frustrate all those involved”.

The Lancet report says that rather than slogging on with steadily reducing malaria cases, while facing the threat of resurgence, global health authorities could “choose to commit to a time-bound eradication goal that will bring purpose, urgency and dedication” to the fight.

Malaria infected about 219 million people in 2017 and killed about 435,000, the vast majority babies and children in the poorest parts of Africa. These totals are little changed from 2016, but global numbers had fallen steadily from 239 million in 2010 to 214 million in 2015, and deaths from 607,000 to about 500,000 from 2010 to 2013.

To stamp out the disease by 2050, the report’s authors propose three ways to speed up ­malaria’s decline.

Existing malaria-fighting tools such as bed nets, medicines and insecticides should be used more smartly, it says, and new tools such as vaccines should be developed. Governments in both malaria-affected and malaria-free countries need to boost investment by about $US2bn a year to accelerate progress.

Reuters