Organizations Pledge $3-Billion to Malaria-Prevention Effort

Foundations, companies, and international aid organizations recently pledged $3-billion to help stop the spread of malaria, with a goal of preventing 4.2 million people from succumbing to the disease during the next six years.

The ambitious effort, which is part of the new Global Malaria Action Plan, was announced during a meeting of world leaders to discuss world poverty and development efforts at the United Nations.

The pledges include $168.7-million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support PATH, a medical charity in Seattle, to develop a malaria vaccine. Currently the nonprofit organization is working with GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, a pharmaceutical company in Belgium, to test a potential vaccine, known as RTS,S.

‘First Step’

With the new money, the two research groups may be able to increase the medicine’s effectiveness and its ability to provide longer-lasting protection, said Bill Gates, the foundation’s co-founder. “I’m very hopeful that the malaria vaccine currently in advanced testing will be proven effective, but that will just be the first step,” he said in a statement. “Now it’s time to develop a new generation of vaccines that are even more effective, and could someday help eradicate malaria altogether.”

In addition to Gates, other contributions include $1.6-billion from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, a U.N.-affliated nonprofit group in Geneva that is supported by governments and foundations, as well as $2-million from the United Nations Foundation, a charity in Washington created by the media mogul Ted Turner.

The Marathon Oil company, in Houston, also said it would provide $28-million to increase a malaria-prevention program in Equatorial Guinea.

That award is the first in a fund-raising effort by the U.N. fund, the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, TB, and Malaria, and Malaria No More, a nonprofit organization in Washington, to garner $100-million from businesses to fight malaria.

The news comes on the heels of a World Health Organization report that suggests progress has been made against malaria. For example, in Africa, deaths caused by malaria have declined by almost 50 percent in three nations — Eritria, Rwanda, and Sao Tome and Principe.

Yet antimalarial efforts will need even more money in the near future, according to the Global Malaria Action Plan, which was produced by the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, a coalition of the World Bank, U.N, agencies, and other groups: an estimated $5.3-billion next year and $6.2-billion in 2010.