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| Scientists aim high as Nairobi malaria confab opens
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Nairobi, Kenya (PANA) -
The worldâ?s largest malaria conference opened here Mon
day, with a call for substantial and
sustained support for research to guide evidence-based policies and the developm
ent of new malaria tools, which together
could save countless lives.
The 5th Multilateral Initiative on Malaria (MIM) Pan-African Conference brings t
ogether 2,000 researchers, health workers,
public health officials, policymakers and activists from across Africa and aroun
d the world.
Kenyaâ?s Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka opened the conference, the first to be
held in four years. It will highlight the
latest research in malaria prevention and treatment.
â?The theme of this yearâ?s conference is â~Building Knowledge for Actionâ?,
but the key question for malaria is â~which knowledge for
which action?â?â? said Dr. Adrian JF Luty, Senior Researcher at Radboud Univer
sity Nijmegen Medical Centre, the Netherlands, and
Chair of the MIM conference Scientific Committee.
â?If we as a global community are to be ready to achieve eradication, we must i
nvest in the science that can guide these efforts and provide
the tools and methods that will make success possible,â? Dr. Luty said.
Although preventable and treatable, malaria continues to be one of the worldâ?s
most deadly and persistent diseases.
Ninety percent of all malaria deaths occur in Africa, and 85 percent of these de
aths are among children under the age of five.
Since the last MIM conference in 2005, the global community has made tremendous
strides against the disease, the conference organisers
said.
But they noted that â?despite this progress, many African countries are struggl
ing to meet Millennium Development Goal 6, which aims 'to halt and
begin to reverse the incidence of malaria,' and are unlikely to meet the WHO tar
get to halve malaria mortality by 2010.â?
One of the key goals of MIM is to strengthen African research capacity to guide
policies for malaria control and to develop new tools for
prevention and treatment.
Research conducted in Africa has helped guide new practices, for example, in Rwa
nda, where just 5 years ago malaria was the leading
cause of death.
A multi-faceted approach using long-lasting insecticide treated nets (LLINs) and
training for community health workers has
decreased the malaria death rate by 60 percent in just two years.
In Zanzibar, a mass distribution of LLINs in early 2006 and insecticide spraying
programmes triggered a 95 percent reduction in
malaria infections for children fewer than two years of age.
â?Over the past four years, new strategies coupled with unprecedented global at
tention and support from endemic country governments have
increased access to malaria treatment and prevention for some of the worldâ?s m
ost vulnerable communities,â? said Dr. Francine Ntoumi, MIM
Secretariat Coordinator at the African Malaria Network Trust (AMANET), which has
hosted the MIM secretariat for the past four years as the
organisationâ?s first African secretariat.
â?However, we must continue to build a critical mass of scientists working on m
alaria in Sub-Saharan Africa, so that countries with the
greatest burden are themselves setting the research agenda,â? she said.
Due to continued cost and availability challenges, those most at-risk of malaria
often have limited access to proven prevention tools, such
as insecticide-treated nets and access to the current gold-standard drug, artemi
sinin-based combination therapies (ACTs).
As a result, the disease disproportionately affects poor rural communities in ma
laria-endemic countries.
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| Nairobi - 02/11/2009 |
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