The WHO Roll Back Malaria partnership was founded in 1998. Its programme is planned to last the first decade of this century. Today’s announcement by George Osborne to allocate £500 million annually to fight malaria in Africa indicates the Conservative Party’s genuine commitment to both support this programme and international development in general. An economically successful Africa is a goal worth striving for. It would benefit not only Africans, but also the wider world.
The annual economic cost of malaria in Africa has been estimated to be more than US$ 12 billion in lost GDP. The frustration is that the disease could be controlled for much less than that. If the world community is serious about fighting world poverty, in particular within Africa, it must be serious about fighting malaria. It is a disease that causes, and is of, poverty. Annual economic growth in countries with high malaria transmission has been historically lower than in countries without the disease. Economists believe that in some sub-Saharan countries malaria leads to a growth penalty of over 1% per year1.
Malaria is a preventable and curable disease. Despite this knowledge it kills more than one million people each year. The great majority of those deaths are to vulnerable African children. Wealthy Western governments share a moral responsibility to deal with this infectious disease promptly. Not only because it is needlessly killing Africans, but with on-going climate change, it may very well become our health problem soon.
