According to new report by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), progress has been made in preventing and treating malaria since 2000 and more countries are introducing the latest preventative measures to beat the disease.
Dr LEE Jong-wook, Director-General of WHO says even countries with limited resources and a heavy malaria burden now have a better opportunity to control the disease with proven interventions such as insecticide-treated nets, and the latest artemisinin-based combination therapies but these must reach many more people before a real impact on malaria will be seen.
Ann M. Veneman, Executive Director of UNICEF says that malaria kills three times as many children in Africa as HIV infection and in order to reduce death rates more focus must be placed on preventing it. Difficulties in getting reliable information about malaria in most affected countries means it is too soon to measure the impact of the recent expansion of malaria control strategies.
Countries where the previous mainstays of malaria treatment, such as chloroquine, are no longer effective are also adopting new therapies. Since 2001, 42 malaria-endemic countries, 23 of them in Africa, have been using the latest generation of antimalarial medicines. An additional 14 countries are in the process of changing their malaria treatment policy and 22 have embarked on home-care programmes which enable families and other care-givers to manage malaria.