Global malaria control funding has gone up significantly since 2007, but funding shortfall remains, study says

Global malaria funding has gone up by 166 percent since 2007, but total funding is still 60 percent short of the $4.9 billion required for comprehensive malaria control this year, according to a study published in the journal Lancet on Saturday, Agence France-Presse reports. Malaria control financing has risen from $730 million in 2007 to $1.94 billion this year, according to the analysis (10/2).

The study found "that 21 countries - including 12 in Africa - now get enough or nearly enough donor help to control disease," Reuters writes of the research, which "assessed the level of malaria risk for 93 countries where the disease is endemic and calculated the financial requirements to control it." But the researchers found that funding in 50 countries, where the majority of people at risk for contracting malaria live, was not adequate (10/2). The research also showed that "China and India, as well as two African countries, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, have economies that are strong enough to support malaria programmes" with just domestic resources, AFP writes (10/2).

The requirement of $4.9 billion for malaria funding is based on a Roll Back Malaria estimate, the BBC reports. Professor Bob Snow of Oxford University led the Lancet study and collaborated with researchers from Kenya's Kenyatta National Hospital.

"Poor countries with inadequate donor assistance and large sectors of their population at risk of malaria must remain the focus of attention if global ambitions for malaria control are to be realised," Snow said. "The challenge will now be on finding more money, making sure funding is linked to performance and putting pressure on malaria-endemic countries with large domestic incomes to do more for themselves. A failure to maintain the momentum will mean money spent so far will have been for nothing."

The BBC also reports on a related Lancet Comment, where Professor Anne Mills, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, pointed out that in some cases, external funding might be low because a country is funding its own malaria control efforts (Lichtarowicz, 10/1).