The RBM Partnership to End Malaria welcomes the latest research from The Lancet Commission on Malaria Eradication - Malaria Eradication within a generation: ambitious, achievable, and necessary. Authored by 41 of the world’s leading experts, the new academic report shows that eradication is possible and could be achieved within a generation, and proposes solutions to the major operational, biological and financial challenges involved in reaching this goal.
The launch of The Lancet Commission’s report comes soon after the WHO Strategic Advisory Group on Malaria Eradication published an executive summary of its forthcoming report on malaria eradication. Both reports reaffirm the RBM Partnership’s vision of a malaria-free world, outlining the priority actions required to ensure that ending malaria later this century remains an ambitious, yet achievable, goal.
However, both reports emphasize that to reach eradication, there is an urgent need to significantly step up political will and financing, increase efficiencies through greater collaboration and better use of data, and invest in developing and expanding access to transformative life-saving tools and innovations.
Crucially, both reports demonstrate that experts from across the world agree we must continue the drive towards ending the disease within a generation because it will yield immense social and economic gains that far outweigh the costs associated with eradication.
Dr Abdourahmane Diallo, CEO of the RBM Partnership to End Malaria, said:
“Since 2000, global efforts against malaria have saved 7 million lives from the disease and prevented more than a billion cases of malaria - and it is now thanks to this tremendous progress that we have the possibility of ending malaria within our lifetime.
The world must seize this opportunity and act upon calls to intensify efforts to reduce the misery and social and economic impacts inflicted by a disease that continues to claim more than 400,000 lives a year. The next few years will be critical if we are to have a fighting chance of eradicating malaria and achieving Sustainable Development Goals within a generation. We must heed the calls from malaria experts by stepping up the fight and pursuing the eradication goal with renewed vigour.”
In his commentary titled The malaria eradication challenge in the new Lancet Report Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization said:
“Eradicating malaria has been one of the ultimate public health goals for a century…The Commission makes a bold call for eradicating malaria by 2050. I would be thrilled to see this global scourge eradicated even earlier. But we will not achieve eradication within this timeframe with the currently available tools and approaches... The good news is that we, the global malaria community, know what we need to do.”
