The New York Times published an article on U.S. foreign aid and the lack of funding for simple diseases such as diarrhea and pneumonia that are continuing to kill millions of children in Africa every year. 

In the midst of our current economic crisis, funding for foreign assistance and global health has become more difficult to attain.  The question of how to prioritize our aid is heart wrenching. 

But is this a question we have to ask?  Can the answer be more than just one priorty or another? Malaria presents an alternative to mutually exclusive global health decisions.   There is a light at the end of the tunnel in regards to malaria.  We can end malaria deaths by 2015 and then malaria resources can be used for other health issues. 

Additionally, the Neglected Tropical Diseases and malaria health communities are already taking an integrated approach in many areas to fight their respective diseases.  And the infrastructure that malaria investment leaves behind will produce polyvalent effects that can benefit multiple disease areas.  For instance, a laboratory designed to diagnose malaria cases will be able to be re-appropriated for other uses when malaria has come and gone. 

There is a tendency among some to view the mobilization of resources as a competitive endeavor.  This is not the case. Investments in health can be multifaceted and beneficial to multiple disease fronts.  We need to maximize these opportunities.

According to reporting by the Kaiser Family Foundation, GlaxSmithKline CEO Andrew Witty has promised that if an experimental malaria vaccine is effective his company will ensure it is affordable.

“We are not going to let price get in the way of access for malaria vaccines,” Witty said. “We will be extremely responsible about the way we price this vaccine.” Witty said he preferred a pricing mechanism like the Advance Market Commitment programme, “which creates a financial incentive with a guaranteed price for drugmakers to deliver vaccines to poorer countries,” the news service writes.

Christian Loucq, president of the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, said, “Malaria is such a huge problem in Africa, and a vaccine is perceived as such a strong intervention, that when we talk about a potential vaccine candidate the cry is always ‘when will it come?’” According to Loucq, “Among public health specialists and vaccinologists in Africa, this is seen as the major upcoming intervention – and that is creating great excitement.”

This is great news as afordability of drug and intervention tools is a challenge for poorer African nations. Read more on Reuters.

Malaria No More’s “Surround Sound” campaign is getting some converage on the ONE website and the Child Fund International blog.

Creating a “360-degree malaria education and advocacy campaign” in the small West African country is no easy feat. The idea is to mix multiple communication channels with local marketers of entertainment, sport, faith, and business so everyone on every level is included in the education process. Step one: promote malaria prevention through song. Senegalese icon Youssou N’Dour crafted the song Xeex Sibbiru, or Fight Malaria in English, which challenges Senegalese to see the impacts of malaria and choose to take action against it.

Check out the Xeex Sibbiru song on the Child Fund blog.

Our friends at the ONE blog recently posted a blog on the Center for Global Development’s 2009 Commitment to Development Index (CDI), their annual ranking of rich countries based on their policies to help the developing world.  According to the report, the group of 7, the world’s most industrialized nations, are not among the top ten. 

Among the G7, Canada scored the highest, coming in at 11th, followed by France, Germany and the UK, all tied for 12th. The United States was ranked 17th, doing best in trade, but lowest in overall aid.

This begs the question, how can we do more?  and in this difficult economic climate, how do we convince policymakers around the world that investment in development is of value.

Just ahead of the Pan-African Malaria conference, news in Kenya is suggesting that the anopheles mosquitoes, the ones to blame for the spread of malaria, are adapting their feeding patterns and possibly feeding earlier than late night periods once believed.

Today on Capitol Hill, The Congressional Malaria Caucus held a briefing announcing its expansion to include Neglected Tropical Diseases.  The briefing included remarks from Ambassador Mark Green-Managing Director, Malaria No More Policy Center, and Former Ambassador to Tanzania; Kari Stoever – Managing Director, Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases; Christopher King – Center for Global Health and Diseases, Case Western Reserve University; and Ambassador Mark Dybul – Office of the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Malaria and Former US Global AIDS Coordinator. 

The briefing focused on the linkages between both NTDs and Malaria.  Both diseases present challenges, but they also opportunity for joint action.  Even though we here in the U.S. tend to view these diseases as separate areas with their individual levels of funding, the truth is we can use mechanisms designed to deliver malaria tools for NTD interventions as well. 

Maximizing areas that can be used for multiple diseases simply makes practical sense.  Former Ambassador Mark Dybul said echoed these sentiments by pointing to three levels that benefit from integration between NTDs and malaria.  First, it makes sense for Congress and policymakers who want to prove they are serious about global health.  By hitting several diseases, policymakers achieve multiple successes for their programs. Secondly, it makes sense for the people who are afflicted by these diseases.  By creating single focal points for healthcare or using existing channels to distribute resources and tools, it simplifies the process for attaining such care.  Finally, it makes sense for the American taxpayer because we get more out of our limited resources. 

While integration between all diseases, with one stacked upon another may not always make sense, Malaria and NTDs represent an excellent opportunity and example of how we can coordinate our response to health threats around the world

MPC Managing Director Mark Green had his thoughts on the integration of malaria and neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) work published on the Global Network’s blog End the Neglect. He cites his firsthand experience in Africa and how we can work together to fight these diseases.

I have spent a lot of time as a teacher and Ambassador in Africa and one thing I remember is that sick Africans don’t visit different clinics depending on their illness. There are not separate clinics for malaria and river blindness in the most remote of villages. If communities are lucky enough to have even one clinic it must respond to and treat any number of diseases. I think our approach to global health efforts must recognize this and find ways to combine efforts for the greatest impact.

Malaria and neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are perfect examples of how we can pair efforts and they have seen success individually, showing us that we can realize improved health systems and an end to deaths from disease.

You can read the whole post at End the Neglect.

Bill and Melinda Gates were in DC yesterday to highlight the success of Global Health funding and U.S. involvement in effort to prevent and end disease around the globe.

You can watch the whole presentation below.

Today on Malaria Watch we welcome Kari Stoever, Managing Director, Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases. Kari will join Mark Green at a briefing with the Malria and NTD Caucus on integration of efforts and health system strengthening.  

Though it may seem callous to suggest there is a silver lining to the ongoing global economic crisis, if we allow ourselves to look for one, it would likely be that our leaders—political, business, philanthropic—are striving for cost-effectiveness now more than ever.  This objective was outlined with particular clarity in President Obama’s Global Health Initiative, wherein he highlighted the need for “proven, cost-effective health care initiatives.”

For years, neglected tropical disease (NTD) control has been a successful, low-cost global health investment—thanks in large part to unprecedented pharmaceutical donation programs.  But we can see even greater returns on our foreign assistance programs when we work outside of disease-specific programming to promote integrated global health interventions wherever feasible.  When it comes to NTDs and malaria, successful integration efforts are already ongoing in the field.

Take for example the story of treatment for one NTD, onchocerciasis, with the drug ivermectin.  For years, the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC) delivered ivermectin through a network of community drug distributors, reaching millions throughout West Africa.  But when APOC expanded its mandate to allow distributors to treat more than just NTDs, it dramatically improved the efficacy of multiple health interventions.  A three-year, multi-country study reported that in districts where community-directed interventions took place, possession and utilization of insecticide-treated bed nets was doubled; Vitamin A coverage was significantly higher, with an average of 90% of eligible children receiving supplements; and ivermectin treatment was boosted by 10%.

And that’s why we’re so excited to see the formal expansion of the Congressional Malaria Caucus to include NTDs: because it represents a commitment to increased dialogue around how we can maximize our global health investments and reduce overlap in treatment efforts.  At the Global Network, we applaud the bipartisan leadership shown by Reps. Payne and Boozman, as well as the inclusivity of the malaria community.  Today represents a major step forward in our combined efforts to reduce the scourge of these diseases while improving the impact of US foreign assistance.

The Washington Post is covering the increased volume today of the Gates Foundation Living Proof Campaign. Bill and Melinda Gates will be in DC this evening to host a live webcast and meet with global heatlh and governmental leaders.

The NGO world and frankly all of DC is abuzz with the oppotunity to spend some time with such dynamic and passionate “optimists.”

Bill and Melinda Gates will make an unusual personal appeal to Washington officials Tuesday night, asking them to continue funding global health initiatives despite the recession and to commit to nearly halve the number of child deaths worldwide by 2025.

“Government funding that’s coming from the United States is making a huge difference on the ground in the developing world,” Melinda Gates said in an interview last week. Particularly over the past four to five years, she said, “it’s really palpable — it’s making a huge difference saving lives.”

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest private foundation in the world. But Gates said that even with its great wealth, the fund is focused on being a catalyst for much larger government-funded projects in health and education. “We have put about $11.9 billion in global health since the inception of this,” she said, most of it within the past decade. “Our money is tiny.”

The presentation, separate meetings with lawmakers and the media campaign are meant to show that U.S. funding is saving lives and that the Gateses think child deaths worldwide can be cut from more than 9 million to 5 million a year in the next 15 years. They point to an AIDS program launched in 2003 by President George W. Bush that is estimated to have saved more than 1 million lives. A Bush initiative on malaria reached an estimated 32 million people last year. And the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which gets a third of its budget from the United States, helped bring 88 million bed nets treated with insecticide to children at risk of getting malaria from mosquitoes.