New funding for anti-malaria research

The recent US $168 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is expected to bolster the fight against malaria in Africa. It is estimated that more than one million people die annually from the disease, mainly because of drug resistance. The funds are expected to accelerate research in new malaria prevention strategies for children, new drugs to fight drug-resistant malaria, and malaria vaccines. The announcement was made after Bill and Melinda Gates met with Mozambican Prime Minister Pascaol Mocumbi and Deputy Health Minister Aida Libombo. "It's time to treat Africa's malaria epidemic like the crisis it is. It is unacceptable that 3,000 African children die every day from a largely preventable and treatable disease," Bill Gates said in a statement. The disease costs the continent up to US $12 billion in lost revenues every year, and consumes 40 percent of all public health spending. The funding is expected to support three major research grants. Twenty-eight million will be allocated to a malaria control strategy known as intermittent preventive treatment in infants (IPTi), a potential way of using existing malaria drugs to dramatically decrease the rate at which young infants become severely ill from malaria. As part of this approach, infants receive an anti-malaria drug three times during the first year, at the time of routine immunisation. An initial study completed in 2001 found that the intervention reduced malaria incidence among infants by 59 percent. Some US $40 million will go to the Medicines for Malaria Venture, a public-private partnership based in Geneva, to counter the spread of drug-resistant malaria by discovering, developing, and delivering malaria drugs. Additionally, US $100 million over four years will be donated to the Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI), based at the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health, in Seattle, in the United States. MVI is expected to use the grant to continue developing the 15 vaccine candidates currently in its portfolio and add other promising candidates. Current spending on malaria control is calculated at around US $200 million annually - far less than the estimated US $1.5 billion to US $2.5 billion needed.