A new study suggests 58% of the decline in infant mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa is due to insecticide-treated mosquito nets. It also suggests that the decline has accelerated over the last few years.

Could you help with some important data entry that requires an hour of your time and some attention to detail?

If so please do get in touch as we have a collection of Post-Distribution Survey questionnaires we are adding to the website as part of our reporting to donors. If 10 volunteers respond we can succeed in making the data available to the public in days.

We are always keen for volunteers to help us with activities such as photo selecting/captioning, video editing, data entry and more.

A study published in Malaria Journal suggests "that funding for malaria prevention in Africa over the past decade has had a substantial impact on decreasing child deaths due to malaria." The study tries to quantify the impact on malaria mortality over the past decade (2001-2010) resulting from the scale-up of malaria prevention intervention. It says that "ITNs accounted for 99% of the lives saved." and recommends that "rapidly achieving and then maintaining universal coverage of these interventions should be an urgent priority for malaria control programmes in the future."

 You can view both the abstract and the paper online.

Someone recently asked us, "Are we winning the fight against malaria?"

Yes, but we are at a critical time now and funds must accelerate so we do not lose the gains made over the last few years.

A picture I can paint for you is to imagine the fight against malaria as walking along a conveyor belt. The good news is the conveyor belt has an end in sight. Compare that to some humanitarian issues, like HIV/Aids and TB, where the end of those conveyor belts cannot be seen or at least they are in the very far distance.

So, there is an end in sight for the fight against malaria, albeit 10+ years away. Now, the conveyor belt is moving against us.

In the last five or so years we have started to make good 'net' (ie positive) progress along the conveyor belt - even though it is moving against us

One measure of this progress is the growth in the number of nets distributed over the last few years. In 2005, globally, 5 million nets were distributed. In 2010, that number was 130 million nets. Good progress. Malaria deaths and the number falling ill both fell. But remember the number of nets needed per year is of the order of 250 million so we are only half way there at best. The issue we now face is malaria funding, while still not enough, is coming under pressure and we already seeing, for example, significant drops in funding to the Global Fund who are one of the organisations through whom governments around the world channel significant funds against malaria.

This is where the analogy with the conveyor belt is a useful one. If the funding is reduced we can start going backwards on the conveyor belt and it is possible we go back to where we were four years or so ago. Think of this on a micro level, ie at the community level, and think about a village that has received. What happens when the nets are at the end of their useful life and new ones are needed? If we don’t have the funds, we cannot replace them and malaria can build again and to the levels we saw pre nets.

That is why funding for nets is so important so we do not lose the gains we have made over the last five or so years: we do not want to go backwards on the conveyor belt. Instead, we want to keep moving forwards so in the next 10 years or so malaria is brought under control - across Africa and elsewhere. 

A recent article in the Lancet, which uses a new way of estimating the number of deaths due to malaria, concludes that 1.24 million people died from the disease in 2010 - much higher than previously recognised.

You can read more about the article on the BBC News site and Against Malaria Founder Rob Mather was interviewed by BBC 5 Live this morning. You can hear the interview via the mp3 link: Malaria interview 5 live.mp3 (7.63 mb). There is also a breakdown of the data on the Guardian website.

After thousands of hours of investigation, evaluation and review - covering internal documents, interviews and on-site visits - the independent charity evaluator GiveWell has just announced its new top-rated charity: Against Malaria!

Read their announcement and the detailed review of our charity for more details.

Elise Johnson, a student at North Central High School, and now at Stanford University, talks on national radio in the US about her experience distributing nets in Senegal: http://soundmedicine.iu.edu/segment/3062/Malaria-Nets-for-Africa

The Global Fund (for Aids, TB and Malaria) has cancelled all Round 11 grants, ie for programmes from mid 2012, as they do not have the money to fund them. This is very worrying for the fight against malaria. Good progress in malaria control has been made in the last five years. Higher levels of net coverage have helped achieve a fall in malaria cases and deaths. We must keep up that momentum as it offers the best chance, and the real possibility, of malaria being brought under control with the dramatic reduction in the number of people who fall sick or die from malaria that can bring.

More info: The Guardian

Press Release (pdf 17.58 kb)