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Control and Eradication of Malaria: Back to Basics

Source: Nature

The Global Malaria Action Plan announced at the UN Millennium Development Goals Malaria Summit in September aims to reduce the malaria burden and to eradicate the disease entirely. Meeting these goals will be an expensive undertaking. The plan calls for donors and governments to increase funding geared towards activities geared towards malaria control such as bednets, which currently stands at an estimated US$1.1 billion in 2008, to US$ 5 billion annually until at least 2020. The plan also calls for malaria research-related funding to be increased to between US$ 750 and 900 million by 2018.

A Nature editorial suggests that it is critical to strike a balance between basic and applied research, if funding agencies and donors are to succeed in their quest to tackle malaria. Basic research is needed to stay ahead of drug and insecticide resistance, to develop new vaccines, and to gain a better understanding of the disease in humans.

The authors recommend that, with massive increase in funding, funding agencies need to coordinate research efforts to avoid duplication and to enable resources to be focused wisely. Indeed, a group called MalERA, with representatives from main research funding agencies and scientists has been established and will sit over the next year to develop a research agenda for eradication of malaria. The authors further note that the status quo regarding involvement of malaria researchers based in malaria endemic countries needs to change. The international malaria research community needs to bring researchers from poorer malaria-endemic countries on board as equals, and not, as is too often the case, as afterthoughts.

View the full article in Nature.