The Hindu : International / Globescan : Malaria may doom plans for Africa

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jun 10, 2005

International

International - Globescan

Malaria may doom plans for Africa

Sarah Boseley

LONDON: Plans for a prosperous Africa are doomed to failure unless malaria, the world's most lethal disease, is tackled as a global health crisis, an all-party group of British MPs warned in a report on Thursday. Malaria kills between one million and three million people a year — several times as many as died in the genocide in Rwanda. Most of them are in Africa, where malaria is the biggest killer of children under five. The HIV/AIDS pandemic which has swept Africa has made treatment less likely, because hospitals are so overcrowded and nurses and doctors themselves have fallen ill. Yet ironically, says the report from the all-party U.K. parliamentary malaria group, unlike HIV/AIDS, the tools for the eradication of malaria are at hand — insecticide-impregnated bednets, house spraying and new drugs based on the Chinese artimisinin plant. ``The biggest obstacle to progress at present is not a shortage of science, but a paucity of political will to deal with malaria,'' the report says. ``Compared with AIDS, for example, malaria is neglected by politicians, researchers, activists and the media.'' The Commission for Africa said that half the deaths of African children from malaria could be avoided if parents had access to nets and drugs that cost not much more than $1 a dose. —

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