African leaders have warned that the world is facing the “worst malaria emergency” in the past two decades.
Heads of state and experts came together on Friday in a show of unity to call for urgent action against malaria at the UN general assembly. They said progress in eradicating the disease faced serious setbacks due to growing resistance of mosquitoes to insecticides and reduced effectiveness of antimalarials. medications and diagnostic tests.
“We are at a critical moment,” Guinea-Bissau President Umaro Sissoco Embaló said on the sidelines of the meeting. “If we don’t act quickly … we will undoubtedly see malaria flare-ups and epidemics.”
The number of people living together malaria in Africa has decreased steadily for almost two decades, but funding for the disease stagnated in 2015 due to donor fatigue and the subsequent redirection of funding to other health priorities such as Covid-19.
“Now is the time to fully fund malaria control to ensure we eradicate the disease once and for all,” Embaló said.
Progress on malaria had been reversed in at least thirteen countries and stalled in others according to the World Health Organization last month. Leaders have warned that funding shortfalls are putting life-saving malaria treatments out of reach of many people, jeopardizing plans to eradicate the disease by 2030.
Julio Rakotonirina, director of health and humanitarian affairs at the African Union Commission, said: “We must ensure we maintain our political commitment and continue to translate these commitments into concrete action. With most AU member states not on track to achieve the goal of eradicating malaria by 2030, much remains to be done.”
Africa carries the highest burden of malaria cases globally, and responsible for 96% of deaths of the disease, according to 2021 data. Almost 80% of these deaths involve children under five years old.
As attention to the disease has waned, threats such as the climate crisis have exacerbated the problem, experts say. Higher temperatures and rainfall create perfect breeding conditions for mosquitoes.
The increasing frequency of extreme weather events, such as floods and cyclones, across the continent in recent years further increases the risk of mosquito-borne diseases.
Mozambique, for example, witnessed this spines malaria after Cyclone Freddy earlier this year, and such disasters make it harder for medicines and services to reach affected areas.
“It is a vicious circle that we have to overcome,” said Dr. Michael Adekunle Charles, head of the department RBM partnership to end malariaa global platform for coordinated action against the disease.
“If we don’t continue to make the connection (on climate-related health risks), we will lose a lot of ground in the fight against malaria.”
Malaria vaccines such as RTS,S/AS01 are gradually being rolled out across the continent. Experts have warned that while the vaccines represented a major breakthrough, they were not a “magic bullet” that would end malaria, and there should be no other measures to curb the disease.
For example, treated mosquito nets have been the most effective malaria prevention strategy since their introduction in the early 1990s. preventing approximately 68% of cases in the part of Africa south of the Sahara. However, its effectiveness may decrease over time due to increasing mosquito resistance.
“The mosquito is constantly evolving, so we have to get ahead of it. If we don’t, it will outsmart us,” Charles said.
The group of leaders at the UN called for the creation of national malaria councils to keep the disease on countries’ development priorities, and for additional World Bank funding to tackle malaria.