It handicaps to the daily life of millions of men and women

In 2010, malaria is still one of the major health challenges of the world. While the United States and many European countries have managed to eradicate the pandemic there is 60 years, the disease continues to severely affect the African continent and is still a part of Asia and Latin America.

Today, half of the world's population is still exposed to malaria and tue nearly 900,000 people per year, nine death ten concerning children under five in sub-Saharan Africa. Beyond the medical drama, malaria is one of the most powerful brakes to the development of Africa. Pandemic paralyzes economies and undermines the development efforts. It handicaps to the daily life of millions of men and women. It represents the first cause of absenteeism in schools and at work. Malaria causes each year loss of GDP of approximately $ 12 billion to the African continent. In addition, it imposes a huge burden on health systems - in some countries, the fight against malaria represents 40 of health expenditures and sometimes more than 50 of outpatient in hospital.

In 2008, on the initiative of the "roll back Malaria" partnership, a road map has been adopted by all relevant actors: the global plan of action against malaria. This plan details a world strategy for the scale of all the measures which have already proved their effectiveness. The mass distribution of bednets treated with insecticide, indoor insecticide spraying and access to new therapeutic combinations ACT today represent a range of effective tools to fight the pandemic. With these combined measures, some countries such as Eritrea, Ethiopia, Zanzibar, Rwanda, Zambia and Swaziland have already reduced the rate of malaria nearly two-thirds.

Between 2003 and 2009, the international funding dedicated to the fight against malaria have reached a record amount of $ 4.6 billion, including a large part comes from the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. A recent report on the financing of the fight against malaria indicates that funding efforts have provided the very encouraging results. Between 2000 and 2009, life of nearly 400,000 children were saved in 12 countries with the distribution of nets and other tools of prevention of malaria. Must applaud these unprecedented effort, to immediately add that they remain insufficient, the annual $ 2 billion not only covering one-third of the needs assessed by the global plan of action (6 billion dollars per year).

All the actors in the fight against malaria agree to say that we have effective tools to achieve results on a larger scale. This is why the international community has set objectives for the end of this year to reach universal coverage of prevention and treatment of malaria in Africa, and 50 reduction in deaths due to malaria. The reduction of its impact could also contribute to the objectives of the Millennium development goals and would have many positive effects immediately noticeable as the reduction of the maternal and child mortality, access to education and the reduction of extreme poverty.

It is possible to roll back malaria, continue to save future lives and significantly stimulate the development of the African continent sustainably. This is within our reach, but we need additional funding for scaling tools which have proved their effectiveness, develop new drugs and accelerate research on the vaccine which is beginning to produce encouraging results. Undoubtedly, a movement is walking, consciousness and public opinion are mobilized, a growing number of countries are about to win major battles. However, this momentum may be stopped if funding efforts are not meet.

Today, we have to ask a simple question of donor countries: are we going to continue to accept that nearly 2,000 children a day die of malaria We have now demonstrated that additional funding will save these lives, therefore, the time came to make a historic choice to sustainably reduce malaria.