World Health Organisation (WHO) has listed poor financing and resistance of malaria disease causing germs to malaria medicines as some of the threats and challenges to eliminating malaria from at least 20 countries come year 2025.as well as malaria interventions in humanitarian and fragile settings.
Olumese stated that sustaining the malaria elimination push required that all governments reaffirm their commitment and refocus to accelerate progress towards achieving the Global Technical Strategy goals for the disease.
He stated that elements of this coordinated response that is multisectoral in nature and established on an effective health system should include a political will, strategic information and better guidance.
Dr Olumese, however, said that actions taken on malaria over the next 24 months as COVID-19 spread across the world would largely determine whether this 2025 milestones of WHO’s global malaria strategy would be met.
“The COVID-19 pandemic could be devastating on its own, but the devastation will be substantially amplified if the response undermines the provision of life-saving services for other diseases,” he said.
Roll Back Malaria Partnership to End Malaria representative, Joshua Levens called for increased investments in the development and scale-up of innovative tools and technologies that would help defeat malaria and other deadly diseases.
He declared “We need to close the 2 billion dollars annual malaria funding gap so that transformative tools can be developed and the most vulnerable can be reached through life saving antimalarial interventions.
“More countries than ever are approaching malaria elimination, targeted investments can help regions like the Americas and countries on the verge of eliminating the disease achieve their goal of zero malaria.”
National Coordinator at Civil Society for Malaria, Immunisation and Nutrition (ACOMIN), Mr Ayo Ipinmoye, stated that active partnership and collaborations between CSOs, communities, partners and government at all levels in Nigeria had led to a significant improvement in health and malaria status in the states where malaria projects are currently running.
He said an active community involvement in commodity utilisation would strengthen accountability for malaria commodity utilisation at all levels.
source: Tribune
