•UK Pledges N25.7bn •Commonwealth Nations Targets
Prevention Of 350 Million Cases
By Chioma Umeha
To mark this year’s World Malaria Day, Nigeria has
renewed its commitment to push malaria up the national priority list, with a
plan to secure $300 million (108 billion )in new financing from the World Bank,
Islamic Development Bank and African Development Bank to help finance its national malaria strategy.
The news came at the background of the
Commonwealth Health Ministers’ launch of the Commonwealth Nations Initiative at
the Malaria Summit London 2018, to curb malaria by half by 2023.
The summit demands for new tools to stay ahead of
the disease, announcing commitments to invest in future innovations.
Nigeria also pledged an additional $18.7 million
to leverage $37 million from the Global Fund to distribute of 15 million
mosquito nets.
Similarly, the UK government has pledged £50
million (N25,757,154,000.00) to malaria programme in Nigeria even as it pledged
£9.2 million to fund new research on development of new triple Artemisinin
Combination Treatments.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said these
efforts by nations, if achieved would prevent 350 million malaria cases and
save 650,000 lives predominately children and pregnant women who are most at
risk annually.
At the Summit co-hosted by the governments of
Rwanda, Swaziland and the UK, the UK government re-affirmed its commitment to
spend £500 million a year on malaria through to 2020 to 2021.
As part of this, the UK announced a further £100
million match fund commitment to the Global Fund to match new contributions
from private donors pound for pound.
Also, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation says
it will extend its investments in malaria with additional $1 billion through to
2023 by fund R&D efforts and reduce the burden of the disease towards ending
malaria for good.
In addition, the African Leaders Malaria
Alliance, (ALMA) in line with the
African Union’s Catalytic Framework to end AIDS, TB and Eliminate Malaria by
2030, committed to supporting member countries to introduce and strengthen the
use of national and sub-national malaria scorecards and action trackers.
This will be coupled with robust community
engagement; to support increased domestic funding from both the public and
private sector; and to continue its work with Heads of State and Government in
Africa to monitor progress towards this goal.
In other multisectoral commitments, Malaria No
More committed to expand efforts to mobilise action and resources to end
malaria through engaging leaders, building new partnerships, expanding reach and
raising the profile of malaria.
The group also plans to support effort to drive
progress towards achieving the new Commonwealth target, mobilise new resources
and continue to build global momentum through the Malaria Must Die campaign.
The commitments are in response to the global malaria community appeal to
Commonwealth leaders to make a game-changing commitment to halve malaria across
the Commonwealth within the next five years.
Statistics show that Nigeria has the largest
funding gap in malaria elimination in Africa.
Nigeria faces a financial gap of N504 billion
($1.4 billion) to implement its national malaria strategy by 2020, according to
the 2017 World Malaria Report, a publication by the WHO.
In addition to constituting 27 per cent of malaria
cases worldwide, out of 30 African countries analysed in the report, Nigeria
alone accounts for 53 per cent of the $1.3 billion funding gap for essential
commodities that include 76 per cent of the funding gap in Artemisinin
Combination Therapy (ACT) and 86 per cent of the funding gap for Rapid
Diagnostic Test kits (RDTs).
In 2016, the WHO disclosed that for the first time
in a decade, the number of malaria cases in the world was on the rise and in
some areas there was resurgence.
“To accelerate the fight against this disease
there needs to be better deployment of existing tools and development of new
and innovative solutions,” the world health body says.
The commitments focus on three important areas to
fight resurgence of the disease. The effective tools (nets, sprays and
treatments) in the fight against malaria are under threat from drug and
insecticide resistance.
