UK pledges N25.7bn to fight against malaria in Nigeria
- The United Kingdom is set to commit £50 million (N25,757,154,000.00) to malaria programme in Nigeria
- The British government had re-affirmed its commitment to spend £500 million a year on malaria through to 2020 to 2021
- The commitment is in response to the global malaria community appeal to Commonwealth leaders
Ahead of the Malaria Summit London 2018, co-hosted by the governments of Rwanda, Swaziland and the UK, the British government re-affirmed its commitment to spend £500 million a year on malaria through to 2020 to 2021, Vanguard report.
Leaders from donor and malaria-affected countries, governments, business, philanthropic and international organisations are coming together to reignite efforts to beat malaria.
Legit.ng gathered that the United Kingdom is set to commit £50 million (N25,757,154,000.00) to the malaria programme in Nigeria even as it pledged £9.2 million to fund new research on development of new triple Artemisinin Combination Treatments.
In line with this, the UK announced a further £100 million match fund commitment to the Global Fund to match new contributions from private donors pound for pound.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will also extend its investments in malaria with additional $1 billion through to 2023 by fund R&D efforts and reduce the burden of the disease towards ending malaria for good.
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The commitment was in response to the global malaria community appeal to Commonwealth leaders to make a game-changing commitment to halve malaria across the Commonwealth within the next five years.
This they said would prevent 350 million cases of malaria and save 650,000 lives, predominately children and pregnant women who are most at risk.
Findings show that Nigeria has the largest funding gap in malaria elimination in Africa.
Nigeria faces a financial gap of N504 billion ($1.4 billion) to implement its national malaria strategy by 2020, according to the 2017 World Malaria Report, a publication by the World Health Organization (WHO).
In addition to constituting 27 percent of malaria cases worldwide, out of 30 African countries analysed in the report, Nigeria alone accounts for 53 percent of the $1.3 billion funding gap for essential commodities that include 76 percent of the funding gap in Artemisinin Combination Therapy (ACT) and 86 percent of the funding gap for Rapid Diagnostic Test kits (RDTs).
The commitments focus on three important areas to fight resurgence of the disease. The effective tools (nets, sprays and treatments) in the fight against malaria are under threat from drug and insecticide resistance.
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The malaria parasite and the mosquitoes that carry it are evolving resistance to existing interventions – malaria is fighting back.
According to an earlier report by Legit.ng, an insecticide that makes human blood poisonous to diseases carrying mosquitoes could soon hit the market if the new finding is anything to go by.
Lead researchers established high doses of the pill could make human blood deadly for mosquitoes. This in turn reduces chances of catching mosquito related diseases.
Ivermectin is a drug that is effective against many types of parasites and is also used to treat head lice, scabies and river blindness among others. Read more: https://www.legit.ng/1161334-amazing-researchers-kenya-human-blood-poisonous-mosquitoes.html#1161334
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Source: Legit.ng
