Continued investment needed to maintain gains against malaria

Jan 17 2013

In this post in Management Sciences for Health's (MSH) "Global Health Impact" blog, Frederick Hartman, the global technical lead for communicable diseases and epidemic preparedness, and regional portfolio director, East Africa at the Center for Health Services at MSH, examines advances made in malaria control over the past decade, writing, "[M]alaria is still one of the five leading causes of child under-five mortality worldwide, and deserves continuing attention." He states, "One challenge in malaria control is the cost of maintaining services at a high-enough level to continue the rate of improvement," and he says "competing spending priorities could threaten" the U.S. lead in funding malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS programs. "A number of other donor countries are also facing their own government cutbacks due to the worldwide recession and its aftereffects," he states, adding, "The human cost of not investing in maintaining the impressive gains of the past decade in malaria control will be very high" (1/15).