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HomeA FocusLondon summit pledges $4.1bn to eradicate malaria

London summit pledges $4.1bn to eradicate malaria

3d illustration of blood cells, plasmodium causing malaria illnessThe worldwide resurgence of malaria, which kills half a million people a year, has sparked philanthropists, business leaders and ministers from donor and malaria-affected countries to pledge $4.1bn to drive research and innovation and improve access to malaria prevention and treatments.

Renewed action and boosted funding to fight malaria could prevent 350m cases of the disease in the next five years and save 650,000 lives across Commonwealth countries, Reuters Africa reports health experts have said. Seeking to reignite efforts to wipe out the deadly mosquito-borne disease, philanthropists, business leaders and ministers from donor and malaria-affected countries pledged $3.8bn to drive research and innovation and improve access to malaria prevention and treatments.

Spearheaded by the Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, the leaders warned against complacency in fighting malaria – a disease which kills around half a million people, mainly babies and young children, each year.

While enormous progress has been made over the past 20 years in reducing malaria cases and deaths, in 2016, for the first time in a decade, the number of malaria cases was on the rise and in some areas there was a resurgence, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The report says the disease’s stubbornness is partly due to the mosquito that transmits the disease and the parasite that causes it developing resistance to the sprays and drugs used to fight them, health experts say. It is also partly due to stagnant global funding for malaria since 2010. Climate change and conflict can also exacerbate malaria outbreaks. “History has shown that with malaria there is no standing still – we move forward or risk resurgence,” Gates said ahead of the “Malaria Summit” in London.

His multi-billion-dollar philanthropic fund, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is co-convening the summit, pledged an extra $1bn through to 2023 to fund malaria research and development to try to end malaria for good. “It’s a disease that is preventable, treatable and ultimately beatable, but progress against malaria is not inevitable,” Gates said. “We hope today marks a turning point.”

The report says the malaria summit was designed to coincide with a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in London. The 53 Commonwealth countries, mostly former British colonies, are disproportionately affected by malaria – accounting for more than half of all global cases and deaths although they are home to just a third of the world’s population.

Among new funding and research commitments announced at the summit, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria said $2bn would be invested in 46 countries affected by malaria between 2018-20.

Pharmaceutical firms  GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Novartis also increased investment into malaria research and development – $250m and $100m respectively. And five agrichemical companies launched a joint initiative to speed up development of new ways to control mosquitoes.

 

The Malaria Summit London 2018 was co-hosted by the governments of Rwanda, Swaziland and the UK, to galvanise renewed action on the disease. The Independent reports that a total of £2.9bn was pledged as the Commonwealth aimed to halve malaria in the next five years.

The report quotes UK Prime Minister Theresa May as saying that the UK would invest £500m each year over the next three years to develop new drugs and technologies. May said: “Today there are millions still at risk, economies held back and a child’s life needlessly taken every two minutes from this disease. This is why I am championing a new Commonwealth commitment to halve malaria across member countries by 2023.”

James Whiting, executive director of Malaria No More UK – the summit organisers, said: “It is exciting to see the UK and the Commonwealth stepping up. It is now time for the rest of the world to do the same. The coming together of governments, the private sector, philanthropists and NGOs demonstrates the determination to beat malaria.”

 

Gates warned that malaria was back on the rise again and would continue to claim more lives worldwide unless governments reinvigorated their push to eradicate the disease. The Times reports that malaria death rates have been in steady decline since 2000 but rose again in 2016 as progress towards eliminating the mosquito-borne preventable disease stalled.

Microsoft co-founder turned philanthropist Gates said innovation would be crucial to keep progress in tackling the disease ahead of its ability to develop resistance to drugs and insecticides. "This setback where the 2016 cases went up is a real signal to us," Gates told the summit. "The funding has to be long-term and we've got to get smarter. The malaria burden really is still unacceptable."

The report says more than 445,000 people died from malaria in 2016, mostly children under five and pregnant women. One child dies every two minutes from the disease. There were 216m cases in 2016 – 90% of which were in Africa. Malaria is estimated to cost the African economy more than $12bn per year and can swallow up to 40% of a country's healthcare spending.

Deaths from malaria dropped by more than 60% between 2000 and 2015. Gates said that around 7m lives had been saved since he began investing in 1999 and several countries had been declared malaria-free. "Progress against malaria has been one of the most impressive successes in global health in this generation," the US philanthropist said.

However, he warned: "If we don't keep innovating, we will go backwards. If we don't maintain the commitments, malaria would go back up and kill over a million children a year, because the drugs and the insecticides always are evaded by the mosquitos and parasites. "Unsurprisingly, I view data as the lifeblood of how we're going to be smarter."

According to the report, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus – who twice caught malaria and lost a brother to it – said a "fresh fight" was needed to hold the gains made in fighting the disease. "Finance is on the decline," the Ethiopian diplomat told summit delegates. "We have to renew the political commitment."

 

The Gates Foundation will invest $1bn through 2023 to fund research and development efforts to end malaria. It also pledged an additional $70.9m to match the British government’s $142m commitment to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria announced by May, says a Fortune report.

The Gates Foundation also announced that it will support ZERO by 40, a new joint initiative of five crop protection companies to accelerate the development of innovative vector control tools to combat the spread of malaria.

The report says the Gates Foundation has committed $1.6bn to the Global Fund and nearly $2bn in grants to combat malaria to date. Most recently, the foundation awarded a $1.4m grant to the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia to create a synthetic DNA-based vaccine for malaria.

 

GSK and Novartis AG will contribute research funds to an almost $4bn global effort to combat malaria, reports Bloomberg. GSK, the UK’s largest drug-maker, is investing an additional $250m, while Switzerland’s Novartis will allocate more than $100m, the companies said.

The report says emerging resistance to drugs and insecticides is making efforts to eliminate the disease more difficult, and some regions are experiencing a resurgence. Certain variants of the lethal parasite called Plasmodium falciparum can evade artemisinin, the most potent medicine available.

These resistant strains have been detected in five Asian countries and risk taking hold in Africa, according to Novartis, which makes a version of the drug. And Gates has said that it would be a “disaster” if a mutant form of the parasite moved beyond Southeast Asia to Africa, where most malaria deaths occur.

The report says Novartis and the Medicines for Malaria Venture are pushing to develop an alternative to artemisinin and began testing a new anti-malaria pill in Africa last year. Pilot projects for the first vaccine – developed by Glaxo and the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative – are due to begin in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi later this year. The experimental vaccine has been in research and development for about four decades, and the projects will take five years to complete, according to Glaxo.

“Malaria is still killing so many children, and the challenge has always been out there to find something which could potentially eradicate it,” Luc Debruyne, Glaxo’s global vaccines president, said. The vaccine is “a very important first step.”

The broader battle will depend on advances in science and technology, including gene editing, Gates says. He has highlighted the promise of research using a DNA-editing technique known as Crispr to genetically alter mosquitoes and cause females to become sterile or produce mostly male offspring. Only female mosquitoes bite and therefore spread malaria.

The number of malaria cases rose 2% to about 216m globally in 2016, and the number of deaths was about the same at 445,000, according to the Geneva-based WHO.

 

The Merck Global Health Institute, the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) have, meanwhile, joined forces to find new therapeutic solutions against malaria. Through this collaborative effort in drug discovery, the partners underscore their firm and long-term commitment to contribute to the discovery and development of new treatments to fight malaria.

IoL reports that this five-year project, co-funded by MMV and Merck, also includes a capacity building component to train African scientists in state-of-the-art research techniques to actively contribute to an international public-private research project. In addition, Merck has provided access to 96,000 compounds from its corporate chemical library for screening against various stages of the Plasmodium parasite lifecycle and is providing in-kind drug discovery support and advice.

“Aiming to achieve the goal of delivering new health solutions for local populations, this collaborative approach between an academic group, an industry organisation, and a non-profit entity is essential to the Merck Global Health Institute’s operating model,” said Dr Beatrice Greco, head of the research and development and access at the Merck Global Health Institute.

In addition to funding, MMV, a non-profit organisation, is providing expert knowledge and in-kind support to the project. “MMV has a long tradition of partnering with the pharmaceutical industry to identify new starting points for the development of new medicines to drive the eradication of malaria,” said Dr Timothy Wells, MMV’s chief scientific officer. “Merck’s expertise and long history of bringing new medicines to target important patient needs makes this a particularly exciting collaboration.”

Laboratory work and training will be conducted at the UCT’s H3D, Africa’s first integrated world-class drug discovery and development centre. “Besides contributing to the development of new therapeutic options to treat malaria patients, we are excited to provide opportunities for young African scientists to take part in the science and to improve their knowledge in drug discovery. Local capacity building is essential for the future of Africa-based research,” said Professor Kelly Chibale, founder and director of H3D.

[link url="https://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFKBN1HP0TP-OZATP"]Reuters Africa report[/link]
[link url="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/malaria-summit-satellite-surveillance-mosquitoes-bill-gates-a8312716.html"]The Independent report[/link]
[link url="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/world/2018-04-18-bill-gates-warns-new-fight-needed-against-resurgent-malaria/"]The Times report[/link]
[link url="http://fortune.com/2018/04/18/bill-gates-foundation-malaria/"]Fortune report[/link]
[link url="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-17/glaxo-novartis-join-4-billion-gates-led-push-to-fight-malaria"]Bloomberg[/link]
[link url="https://www.iol.co.za/lifestyle/health/new-therapeutic-solutions-against-malaria-14562136"]IoL report[/link]

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