Near Zero Malaria Deaths: An Achievable Goal for the 21st Century
OCTOBER 2011
The United States is committed to supporting historic gains against child mortality. This catalytic effort will build on the success and platforms of the Presidents Malaria Initiative (PMI), the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, and the Global Health Initiative (GHI), saving lives of mothers and children from a preventable and curable disease that once ravaged our own nation and creating an important legacy for this Administration. These efforts also will create a generation of healthy children who will have the opportunity to benefit from education, lead productive lives, and contribute to their countries’ development.
Why care about malaria?
Malaria remains endemic in more than 100 countries and territories. Each year, 300 to 500 million people suffer from malaria; 800,000 people die, and 90 percent of these deaths are among pregnant women and children in impoverished rural areas in sub-Saharan Africa. Although malaria currently does not threaten us here in the United States, in sub-Saharan Africa and similar areas of the tropical world, future presidents, scientists, and poets are having their young lives cut short and their hopes for a better future dimmed because of the disease.
Malaria casts a shadow not only over health, but also on educational achievement, worker productivity, and economic development in sub-Saharan Africa.
In the history of humanity, it’s likely that no other disease has caused more suffering, more sickness, and more deaths than malaria. Malaria symptoms were described in Chinese medical texts nearly 5,000 years ago.
Even in the United States, malaria was once a serious problem. Hot and humid summers provide a perfect climate for malaria transmission.
Malaria still remains a threat to our men and women in uniform who are serving overseas.
We can defeat malaria. Global action to combat malaria has saved an estimated 1.1 million lives in sub-Saharan Africa over the past decade. Progress against malaria is one of international development’s most impressive stories. PMI, led by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented together with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), released its fifth annual report [PDF, 5.7MB] this year that shows how our efforts help save an average of 485 children each day from this lethal disease.
The United States is committed to saving the lives of millions of children.
On a technical level, the United States works through PMI and GHI to accelerate ending malaria as a major public health problem across sub-Saharan Africa by intensifying current control efforts and extending the reach of malaria interventions to underserved populations in the most highly affected countries.
This work includes scaling up existing efforts and accelerating the delivery of critical, cost-effective health services by integrating and expanding facility- and community-based health care service delivery. Community case management of malaria and other major childhood killers, including diagnosis and treatment of malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea and malnutrition, and community-based distribution of vitamin A and deworming tablets, can save millions of lives when brought to scale.
We can reduce neonatal and child mortality by 50 percent by joining with additional efforts to scale up immunization with new vaccines, eliminate pediatric AIDS, and proactively manage nutrition and safer births to protect newborns and mothers.
We have a unique moment to build on the technology and momentum generated by tremendous gains in combating malaria and community delivery of high-impact interventions to significantly reduce child mortality. But this window of opportunity will not last. If we are to realize near zero deaths from malaria, we will require a strong bipartisan and global effort. Now is the time.
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View the USAID fact sheet 
