World Malaria Day in brief
On 25 April, people across the globe took part in a wide range of activities to mark World Malaria Day. The theme for this year ‘Invest in the future. Defeat malaria’ highlights the need for continued investment and sustained political commitment to support countries in their efforts to control and eliminate this deadly disease.
To show our support, WWARN’s Chairman of the Board, Professor Nick J White, and WWARN’s Clinical Scientific Co-ordinator, Dr Christian Nsanzabana, joined other leading experts in the field at an event hosted by the Malaria Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Topical Medicine to speak about the serious global health risk of antimalarial drug resistance. The event highlighted a number of the ongoing efforts to contain the spread of drug resistance and presented strategies for tackling resistance as it spreads and emerges in other areas of Asia and Africa.
Other significant activities surrounding World Malaria Day 2014:
The Roll Back Malaria Partnership (RBM) urged ambassadors of malaria-endemic and donor governments and diplomats to sustain their political support and investment in the global effort to eradicate malaria.
The World Health Organisations (WHO) launched a manual to help countries assess the technical, operational and financial feasibility of moving towards malaria elimination, and a Q&A on malaria resistance
- The Government of Chad, with support from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and UNICEF, launched a mass campaign to distribute nearly 7.3 million long lasting insecticide-treated mosquito nets
Interesting news articles and commentary from World Malaria Day:
- World Malaria Day campaign website
- Malaria No More campaign – Influencing Change
- The Lancet Global Health Blog - opinion by Dr Nafo-Traoré, Director General of Roll Back Malaria, ‘Managing malaria in times of change’
- The Lancet comment by Nick White, ‘Malaria: a molecular marker of artemisinin resistance’ (online subscription may be required)
- Malaria Consortium article about an event marking World Malaria Day, ‘Artemisinin resistance – threats & responses,’
- SciDev article on antimalarial drug quality, 'Almost a third of malaria drugs failed quality tests'
- Financial Times special malaria supplement, 'Combatting Malaria' (online subscription may be required)