It is valuable and refreshing to see contributions to strategies for malaria suppression in Africa from other disciplines, such as economics. Killeen and Reed pointed out that the portfolio effect cushions mosquito populations and malaria transmission against vector control interventions.(Killeen GF, Reed TE. Malar J. 2018 Aug 10;17(1):291. doi: 10.1186/s12936-018-2441-z.) Thus it must be considered when planning a strategy for Africa.
Dr. Kenneth Staley has just been appointed as the new head of the US Presidential Malaria Initiative, succeeding Tim Ziemer who led the PMI for so many years. This is probably the most important position in global malaria control, and we wish Dr. Staley all the best.
Given that the drop in malaria prevalence in Nigeria has been very modest in the last 5 years, it would be wise to take another look at the methods being used - which unfortunately are ephemeral (indoor sprays, bednets and drugs) and must be repeated every year. The lack of emphasis on permanent measures, such as Larval Source Management, is a key to the problem. With the ephemeral methods, because the national budget for malaria control can only increase slowly, thus the program will only increase slowly.
Recently I published "Increased economic productivity after suppressing malaria transmission in 14 African countries" in the ejournal African Policy Journal, 2014 v9 Apr. This is a new journal run by students at Harvard Graduate School of Govt, and does not get picked up by the normal search engines, so I urge you to go to their website at African Policy Journal for their current articles.
Although I just did a Critique on the 2017 WHO Malaria Report, it is not the Report that needs to be fixed, it is the failing WHO Strategy.
The 2017 WHO report on the status of malaria at the end of 2016 is a mixture of good news and bad news, with the bad news predominating. Although Dr. Tedros, the Director General of WHO and Prof. Alonso, the Director of the Global Malaria Program are to be commended for their frank presentation of the negative trends, they need to identify the reasons for these trends if we are to make the changes needed to reverse them.
Thus I will attempt herein to analyze some of the reasons for these negative trends, and suggest changes needed if we are to overcome them.
Today 21 September 2017, Administrator Mark Green announced that the U.S. President's Malaria Initiative (PMI), led by USAID and implemented together with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), will launch new country programs in Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Niger, and Sierra Leone, and expand its existing program in Burkina Faso.
With the addition of five new focus countries in West and Central Africa, PMI will have programs in 24 countries in sub-Saharan Africa,
The Eltahir group at MIT has recently published a pioneering study which makes it possible to plan resettlement and new villages in ways which will permanently minimize malaria transmission, because of ecological design. This is especially valuable for engineers planning resettlement communities related to large reservoirs and irrigation systems.
Such safe designs reduce the need for the ephemeral methods based on drugs, bednets and insecticides.
The report is:
27 February 2017
This blog was the result of my preparing for the recent RBM meeting in Geneva. I hope it will be useful for any of you on National Malaria Contol Programs. It is about the need for:
Formation of National Inter-Ministerial Boards for Malaria Control
Since the Trump administration came into office, there are real uncertainties about the long-standing US Presidential Malaria Initiaitive (the PMI), which I helped start in 2005. Firstly, the Administrator Tim Ziemer, who has given the Initiative real stability for 8 years, has resigned. Secondly it appears that the very conservative Newt Gingrich will take over USAID which funds the PMI within the US State Department. Gingrich is opposed to USAID and might dismantle it. Fortunately the new US Secty of State Rex Tillerson has gone on record as favoring the health programs of USAID.
