Gates Foundation official discusses efforts to fight malaria

Jan 16 2013

AllAfrica features an interview with David Brandling-Bennett, deputy director of the malaria program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in which he discusses "current tools being used to fight the disease, the prospect for a vaccine, and the hope of new drugs to accelerate progress," according to the news service. "[R]ecent gains can be lost if we don't keep up the momentum" in the effort to eradicate malaria, Brandling-Bennett said, adding, "The longer it takes, the more we will have to deal with issues of the parasite's resistance and the ability of the human population to sustain a long-term effort," AllAfrica reports. He discusses the success of Path's Malaria Control and Evaluation Partnership in Africa (Macepa) program in Zambia and efforts to tackle malaria in Nigeria, according to the interview transcript. "There is a lot of work to be done to extend the gains we have got but also to build upon those so that we actually do achieve interruption of transmission in more and more places and eventually eradication. Working toward eradication is the only viable long-term strategy to fight malaria," Brandling-Bennett said, the transcript reports (1/10).