25th April was World Malaria Day and today I was listening to the excellent Lancet podcast about the latest global programmes to control and eliminate malaria. Pam Das and Sir Richard Feacham discuss why, in the last 2 years, funding has made significant effect on controlling malaria particularly in the malaria heartland of tropical Africa and in other areas such as Sri Lanka, China and Latin America. Goals have been set to eradicate malaria by 2050. This involves a 3 pronged "Roll Back Malaria" programme: aggressive control in malaria heartlands; progressive elimination in endemic margins (also known as Shrinking the Malaria Map); intensive research.
World Malaria Day was the start of the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) partnership's "Counting Malaria out" campaign, which aims to provide effective intervention in 100% of the population of endemic countries by 2010. This will involve indoor spraying of 200 million homes annually, the installation of 700 million insecticide-treated bednets, 1.5 billion annual diagnostic tests and more than 200 million doses of treatment.
Online documents and multimedia resources are on the World Malaria Day website.
The WHO's World Malaria report 2008 is available in our Official Publications collection.
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