Picture: Vergaard Frandsen / Roll Back MalariaMalaria is a preventable and treatable disease. Yet more than half of the world's population is at risk of malaria and nearly 250 million people become severely ill with it each year.
In Africa, one in five child deaths is caused by malaria. It is also a disease and cause of poverty; the map of malaria illness and death closely matches that of global poverty.
Malaria has significant direct and indirect impacts; it places a major constraint to economic development and interacts with other health conditions such as undernutrition and HIV to worsen health outcomes.
Malaria is a serious cause of maternal and newborn deaths. Malaria illness limits mental and physical development in children and is an important cause of school absenteeism.
Addressing malaria is one of the main priorities of the UK government. We believe we can make a real difference to reducing the global burden of malaria by doing more of what we know already works, innovate to reach more people with prevention and treatment services and finding new tools to tackle malaria even more effectively in the future.
As part of this we have pledged to contribute to at least halving malaria deaths in at least ten high burden countries by 2014/2015.
Supporting countries to achieve this goal will contribute directly to reaching the Roll Back Malaria Partnership objectives set out in the 2008 Global Malaria Action Plan, targets agreed at the World Health Assembly (2005) and the Millennium Development Goals.
The UK government will:
Focus on the poor and vulnerable populations in high-burden countries in Africa and Asia
Achieve results by supporting national malaria control programmes that are embedded in health sector plans using funding approaches appropriate to country circumstances
Seek opportunities to link malaria with other health and non-health programmes to increase benefits and value for money
Improve the quality and availability of data on malaria so that results are measurable, transparent and strengthen accountability to communities and the UK public
Base investment on evidence of what works and innovate where needed
Work with international partners to ensure that global efforts support countries to tackle malaria as efficiently as possible
http://www.dfid.gov.uk/Global-Issues/Emerging-policy/Malaria/
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