EU 'must do more' to tackle malaria

Health experts and government officials are urging the EU to step up efforts to tackle malaria in the developing world.

More than 200 participants - including national and international policymakers, academics and development organisations - came together for the opening of the Oslo malaria conference in the Norwegian capital on Tuesday.

The conference is examining how research and innovation, health strategies and funding systems can help meet the UN target of near-zero malaria deaths by 2015.

Participants are also looking at the importance of tackling malaria ahead of the rapidly approaching 2015 deadline for the millennium development goals.

In a provocative opening address, Norwegian foreign affairs minister Jonas Gahr Støre said that some governments in Europe needed a wake-up call to address the issue.

"Perhaps the greatest hope, paradoxically, is that malaria will come back to Europe because then some governments will really start to care," he said. "New approaches are needed."

Policymakers must recognise the link between foreign and health policy if they want to boost international stability and security, he argued, adding, "Poverty breeds ill health and ill health breeds poverty. Poverty breeds failed states and failed states breed insecurity."

Støre said, "In 2011 there is no excuse for children dying of malaria. Fighting it is not hi-tech – it is low-tech. We know how to prevent the disease, we know how to diagnose it and we know how to treat it. We have successfully eradicated malaria in most parts of Europe and now we need to control the disease in Asia and Africa."

Figures from the Roll Back Malaria partnership show that the disease causes more than 880,000 deaths globally every year, 800,000 of which are in Africa and 85 per cent in children under the age of five.

Awa Marie Coll-Seck, the executive director of the Roll Back Malaria partnership said much progress had been made in the past 10 years. "Now that we are on the heels of the decade to roll back malaria, we have the opportunity to look proudly on our achievements," she said.

Failure to improve financing could reverse this progress and "take us back to the dark age of malaria" when thousands of children were dying every day, she warned.

"Our task is enormous but we need to strengthen and intensify our commitment. A financial gap is threatening to take us back to the dark age of malaria. If we do not sustain what we are doing we will go back and have epidemics in countries that have done so well. We really need to maintain our existing commitments at global and national level."

Community-based action

Coll-Seck, a former Senegalese health minister, also called on the EU to go further.

"We all think we can have more from the EU," she said. "We must continue this advocacy and ensure that the EU can go further and do more for malaria."

The conference came after figures released last week showed that the EU had failed to meet its 2010 targets of increasing aid to developing countries. Development organisations warned that ambitious MDGs would not be met without a significant boost in development aid.

However, Coll-Seck said it was important to recognise the EU's contribution to the global fund to fight Aids, tuberculosis and malaria, an international financing institution focused on prevention and treatment of the three diseases.

"We need to acknowledge that the EU is an important donor to the global fund," she said. While she recognised that national budget constraints would be taken into consideration, she insisted that malaria is a development issue and called for greater investment to help countries go further.

Sven Mollekleiv, the president of the Norwegian Red Cross, said that civil society, government and academia needed to be involved to "take the malaria agenda forward".

"If we stand behind the communities at risk and empower them with the tools they need it is possible to prevent malaria deaths," he said.

Mollekleiv said he was optimistic of reaching the near-zero target by 2015, saying that the move would save hundreds of thousands of lives every year.

"The numbers are high, time is short, the challenge is daunting but what we want to do is very concrete and it is achievable."

Mollekleiv pointed to findings from the Red Cross malaria advocacy report, which showed that gains have been made as a result of community-based action. The Red Cross and its partners had helped to avert more than 300,000 malaria deaths and protect millions through net distribution, said Mollekleiv, but he added that the disease "remains a global emergency".

"The fight against malaria matters beyond the disease itself," he said. "The millennium development goals are not achievable without tackling malaria," he said.