New plan to combat malaria

Zambia has launched a strategic plan to combat malaria, which kills 50,000 of its people every year and causes 40 percent of infant deaths. Dr Victor Mukonka, director of Public Health and Research at the Ministry of Health, told IRIN that the National Malaria Strategic Plan for 2006-2011 would scale up interventions to combat the disease and provide 80 percent of its target population with prevention measures and effective treatment in the next three years. "The disease accounts for 46 percent of outpatients in our hospitals," Mukonka noted. Objectives of the plan include providing insecticide-treated bed nets to children and pregnant women, spraying houses with insecticide, making timely diagnosis accessible to suspected patients, and offering prompt and effective treatment to patients within 24 hours. Zambia requires US $170 million to implement the seven-year plan and has so far managed to garner commitments worth $28 million from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the World Bank and other partners. The global Roll Back Malaria (RBM) campaign, launched in 1998 by the World Health Organisation, the UN Children's Fund, the UN Development Fund and the World Bank, has set a goal of reducing the burden caused by malaria by 50 percent, compared to a baseline set by the number of cases in 2000. Dr James Banda, a representative from the RBM Secretariat, observed, "Not only does malaria still continue to cost Africa an annual loss of $12 billion in GDP, but it is still killing 3,000 people, mainly children under the age of five, every single day."