Fewer bed nets given out in fight against malaria, WHO says
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}A woman suffering from malaria rests on a bed at a hospital in El Sereif village, North Darfur, Sudan. (AP Photo/UNAMID, Albert Gonzalez Farran, File)
Global efforts to curb malaria are stalling after a drop in funds to buy bed nets, according to the latest report Wednesday from the World Health Organization.
For the second year in a row, WHO noted a dramatic decline in the number of bed nets given out to protect people from the mosquitoes that spread malaria. In 2010, 145 million bed nets were distributed; that fell to 92 million in 2011 and 70 million last year.
"Victory over this ancient foe is still a long way off," WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan wrote in the report. WHO says it has less than half of the $5.1 billion it needs for its malaria efforts.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Last month, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a leading international donor, temporarily stopped buying bed nets from the two top manufacturers after a corruption scandal.
Malaria causes symptoms including fever, chills and vomiting and can kill if not treated early. The parasitic disease mainly strikes children under 5 in Africa. WHO estimated there were about 207 million cases of malaria and 627,000 deaths worldwide last year, with 80 percent of the cases in Africa.
But those numbers come with a big disqualifier; Credible figures are only available for countries representing about 14 percent of malaria cases worldwide.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}WHO said it has so little information it cannot tell if malaria cases are going up or down in the worst-hit countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nigeria, which account for about 40 percent of the global caseload.
"These are the black hole countries," said Jo Lines, a malaria expert at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who was not part of the WHO report. "Not knowing what's happening in these wild places is a concern."
The slowing progress makes it highly unlikely that WHO and its partners will achieve their target of reducing malaria deaths to "near zero" by the end of 2015.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"It's one thing to be aspirational but something else to be promising things that can't be done," Lines said. "This is a marathon and we need to treat it like one."