British government pledges US $2.5 million to fight malaria

The British government pledged US $2.5 million on Wednesday to combat a massive malaria epidemic threatening 15 million people in Ethiopia. The funding follows an emergency appeal by the UN for $5 million to provide drugs and mosquito nets for affected regions. British ambassador to Ethiopia Myles Wickstead called on the international community to follow suit and provide financial backing to stave off the crisis. "Malaria is one of the biggest killers in Ethiopia," Wickstead said. "Financial support from the donor community is required urgently to avoid a major epidemic." Malaria claims around 100,000 lives in Ethiopia each year – 250 people a day - out of a population of 70 million. The government on Saturday warned the public to take greater care given the risk, but acknowledged that the reach of the deadly disease continued to spread. "The continuous expansion of malaria-affected areas and the corresponding growing number of our compatriots who suffer or die from it has made this scourge one of the major health care challenges facing the country," the ministry of information said in its weekly statement. "Relentless efforts are therefore a must to halt the spread of this epidemic." Humanitarian organisations say rains in the country have left pools of stagnant water that have provided a fertile breeding ground for mosquitoes. "The risk of death spread by malaria mosquitoes looms in millions of homes in Ethiopia," the UN Country Team said in a special alert issued in October. It warned that "thousands of deaths" could occur as people already weakened by months of drought and hunger succumb to the deadly disease, and said Ethiopia lacked sufficient drugs for 5 million people. All forms of malaria are deadly, but the parasite species plasmodium falcifarum, which causes cerebral malaria, is the most lethal, according to Dr Demene Aliu of the disease surveillance section at the World Health Organisation. Left untreated, it could kill a person in three to four days, Aliu said.