"This is the first phase of a massive initiative both to ensure sustained funding and improve countries' ability to achieve impact," said Awa Marie Coll Seck, the Partnership's Executive Director.
"Success breeds success. We all need to make the money work better and achieve results if we are to secure predictable funding and meet ambitious malaria control targets over the next three years."
Annually, over 90 percent of the 1 million global malaria deaths occur in African countries.
In many of these countries, malaria is the leading cause of death, with one child dying from the disease every 30 seconds.
The partnership was created in 1998 by the UN World Health Organisation, the UN Children's Fund, the UN Development Programme and the World Bank.
It now brings together governments affected by malaria, international development agencies, academic institutions and others.
Every year, grants are awarded, mostly by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, to countries based on their needs.
Over six years, the Fund, the UN-backed international public private partnership which is the world's largest donor in curbing malaria, has approved grants totalling $2.6 billion (approx R18 billion).
Anti-malarial medicines are crucial in the fight, alongside other measures such as insecticide-treated mosquito nets and indoor residual spraying.
In South Africa one of the outcomes of the national Department of Health's programme of action is to reduce malaria cases by 10 percent per year.
The government's social cluster reported in July 2006 that preparations were underway to commence in-door residual spraying against mosquitoes and that health promotion material on malaria prevention was being finalised.
In September 2006 the World Health Organisation endorsed government's use of Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane (DDT) insecticide to control malaria.
DDT is sprayed in small quantities on houses, inside walls and under eaves to kill the female Anopheles mosquito.
The chemical has been used in South Africa since 1946.
The United Nation's malaria partnership in granting funding comes ahead of Africa Malaria Day marked each year on 25 April.
The first-ever Africa Malaria Day was on 25 April 2000, when African leaders from 44 malaria-affected countries gathered in Abuja and Nigeria for the African Summit on Malaria.
At the summit, participants signed the historic Abuja Declaration which commits governments to fight the disease with a view to halve it by 2010.
Source: BuaNews
To receive regular email alerts, contact us at updates@developmentprogram.org
Click here for Newsletter Archive |
