African Leader’s Malaria Alliance
Over the summer, a number of malaria funds and initiatives were launched across East Africa. An End Malaria Fund was established in the Kingdom of Eswatini in 2019, providing the vision and strategic direction for African countries to establish similar funds and councils to promote resource mobilization, advocacy, increased action and accountability. The Fund’s office opened in August of this year. Already in its first year of operation, the Fund has converted pledges made during 2019 during the launch of the Fund to contributions amounting to Emalangeni 7, 5 million to support the National Malaria Programme. Between 2020 and 2021, it is expected that 15 similar funds or councils will be operational across Africa. Mozambique launched its National End Malaria Fund, a public-private partnership between the government, the private sector, and community leaders for championing the fight against malaria. The new Fund adds to the two initiatives “Zero Malaria Comeca Comigo” campaign and “High Burden to High Impact” initiative, that had been launched in 2018.
President of Liberia Her Excellency Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Nobel Laureate who also served as the ALMA Chair (2012-2013), was appointed as Co- Chair of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPR) to evaluate the world’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
ALMA welcomed the initiative by the African Union of the Pan African Youth Digital Consultation to Develop a Malaria Youth Engagement Strategy, a youth dialogue that will provide a strong foundation for further engagement to ensure a common position for intergenerational dialogue where young people are fully engaged in co-creating adequate and sustainable solutions for the Africa they want.
Asia Pacific Leader’s Malaria Alliance (APLMA)
In early September, APLMA conducted its annual Malaria Week, a convening of high-level government officials and other national, regional and global stakeholders, to work together for elimination of malaria from Asia and the Pacific by 2030. The meeting welcomed the Asia Pacific Malaria Elimination Network (APMEN), a network of national malaria programs (NMP) and partner institutions that provide technical and operational support to NMPs for accelerating malaria elimination. Topics covered included surveillance systems, domestic resources for malaria elimination, new treatment regimens and diagnostic tests. The event closed with the APLMA Leaders’ Roadmap call for a Senior Officials’ Meeting (SOM) to be convened to facilitate high-level discussions and analysis of progress against priorities for elimination.
The Alliance also launched a roadmap for improving access to radical cure for vivax malaria in Thailand. APLMA and APMEN, in consultation with countries and partners, will be developing two advocacy tools: The Policy Roadmap and the Commodity Tracker. The aim is to increase the visibility of radical cure options among senior officials and policy makers and to promote timelier introduction and scale up of these treatment regimens to achieve elimination targets. The Policy Roadmap provides a high-level overview of the policy and related processes required to accelerate access to innovative malaria commodities. The Commodity Tracker outlines the different milestones and related policy decisions required to accelerate access to innovative malaria products and maps it as a timeline against the country's elimination goal.
A thematic brief about the link between malaria and climate change in Asia Pacific highlights that climate change could wipe out the gains against malaria in the region. A quantitative assessment by the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that climate change may cause an additional 60,000 malaria deaths between 2030 and 2050 even when accounting for economic growth and health progress. It also projects that about 5% of the global malaria cases, or 21 million cases, would be attributable to climate change in 2030. Asia Pacific is particularly vulnerable for the four following reasons: 1) The region’s geography makes it highly susceptible to rising sea levels, other weather-related events, and climate change; 2) The region has disproportionately high burden of vector-borne diseases; 3) Low income populations mainly in tropical/subtropical countries are likely to be most affected; and 4) Several countries in Asia-Pacific region are facing the double burden of infectious and non-communicable diseases.
The President’s Malaria Initiative
Dr. Ken Staley, Global Malaria Coordinator of the United States President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) shared a blog post discussing that projections about COVID-19 to significantly disrupt prevention campaigns and access to antimalarial medicines and malaria deaths could double in 2020 and wipe out decades of hard-fought progress aren’t destiny. He explains that many life-saving malaria prevention efforts have been adapted to safely continue during the COVID-19 pandemic—with PMI-supported bed net, indoor residual spraying (IRS), and seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) campaigns on track to protect tens of millions of people from malaria. Critical work is also underway to minimize the impact of COVID-19 on the delivery of routine malaria and other health services.
The Global Fund to Fight HIV, TB, and Malaria
News from the Global Fund have revolved around the need to protect decades of progress against HIV, TB and malaria. The Global Fund has approved a total of US$736 million to support the COVID-19 response across 104 countries and 12 multicounty programs. Their latest COVID-19 Situation Report shows that countries are using 35% of the funds under the COVID-19 Response Mechanism for adapting HIV, TB and malaria programs to safeguard progress. Additional data shows that malaria is the least impacted disease in terms of service delivery disruption, with moderate levels of disruption. Levels of disruption to national stocks of HIV and TB medicines remain high, with 10% of countries reporting shortages of HIV medicines and 9% for TB medicines. 4% of countries report shortages for malaria medicines.
The Global Fund’s Results Report shows that 160 million mosquito nets were distributed to protect nearly 320 million people from malaria for three years in 2019. To protect people from malaria, the Global Fund worked with partners to reduce the cost of an insecticide-treated mosquito net to less than US$2 and the cost of antimalarial treatment dropped to US$0.58 in 2019 – savings that helped purchase more than 14 million extra nets and treat more than 24 million additional people for malaria. However, the reductions in malaria mortality rates and number of malaria cases have slowed markedly, and cases of malaria in pregnant women and children remain high. This year, the report calls to urgently invest to protect decades of progress against HIV, TB and malaria that are being derailed as a knock-on effect of the COVID-19 pandemic.