Efforts to end malaria in Nigeria have entered a new global phase with the richest man in Africa, Alhaji Aliko Dangote teaming up with other global influential private and public leaders, in championing this move.
This alliance was formed recently at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland to form End Malaria Council, a platform to ensuring that malaria eradication assumes a top global priority. The End Malaria Council is meant to drive global attention and funding to wipe out the disease for good.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 78 per cent of people who die from malaria are children under five, mostly in sub-Sahara Africa. In 2015, there were 214 million cases, and 438,000 deaths from Malaria. WHO said 3.2 billion almost half of the world population are at risk. In 2015, 97 countries had on-going malaria transmission. The global malaria mortality rate was reduced by 60 per cent in 2000 to 2015, and an estimated 6.2 million lives were saved as a result of a scale-up of malaria interventions. Twenty five per cent of the 627,000 people, who die from malaria each year, are from Nigeria.
Dangote, a foremost entrepreneur has always canvassed for concerted efforts to rid Nigeria and Africa of malaria which he said decimates the African workforce and the young ones, thus slowing down its economic growth. According to him, the world without malaria is possible and that it is a challenge to all.
Other prominent persons on the Council with Dangote are Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Ray Chambers, the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Health in Agenda 2030 and for Malaria and six others.
Dangote, who has been using his Dangote Foundation as a platform to fight malaria said the inauguration of the Council is another critical milestone in the fight against malaria. He promised to join others to collectively tackle malaria saying he was ready to commit himself and his resources into the fight.
He described malaria as a preventable disease and therefore all should be done to collaborate on how to deal with it.
While expressing happiness that successes are being recorded with the active support and participation of world leaders in government and business, the Nigerian Malaria Ambassador noted the success achieved so far was key to stimulation of the nation’s economy as the potential productive sector of the population are the vulnerable groups.
In his comment at the Council, Bill Gates who co-authored a report with Chambers in 2015 called Aspiration to Action: What will it take to end malaria? said, “The next chapter of the fight against malaria starts now.’’
Gates added that, “For the first time in history, we have a roadmap to a world without malaria – where no one has to die from a mosquito bite ever again. With renewed focus, innovation and new commitments of leadership and funding, we can be the generation to end malaria once and for all.”
The launch of the End Malaria Council Came just a month after the release of the World Health Organization’s 2016 World Malaria Report, which showed remarkable progress in reducing cases and deaths from malaria since 2000, but also underscored the urgent need for global leadership, new funding and innovation to stay on track to meet targets.
Members of the End Malaria Council are expected to work in collaboration with the Roll Back Malaria Partnership and other key partners to help countries and regions achieve their malaria control and elimination goals. Members of this unique group will use their voices and networks to support the work already underway by malaria field workers, scientists and experts by focusing on three areas: building political will, mobilizing resources and supporting the development of new tools to find, prevent and treat malaria.
The Council has nine founding members, a group of whom met on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland to discuss strategies for filling critical financing gaps in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The End Malaria Council will grow to represent all of the key malaria-endemic regions. Inaugural members include.
Other Council members are Peter Chernin, Founder, Chernin Entertainment and The Chernin Group, Idriss Déby, President, Republic of Chad (representing the African Leaders Malaria Alliance), Jakaya Kikwete, Former President, United Republic of Tanzania, Graça Machel, Founder, Foundation for Community Development, Mozambique, Luis Alberto Moreno, President, Inter-American Development Bank and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President, Republic of Liberia.
It would be recalled that Dangote had on the platform of his Dangote Foundation galvanized stakeholders, including the central government to embark on the strategy code named Malaria Zero, an ambitious programme to eliminate Malaria by 2020 in Nigeria.
Then the stakeholders at the inaugural meeting sponsored by Dangote foundation in Lagos launched what they called the Private Sector Engagement Strategy against Malaria (PSESM), which appealed to the Private Sector to join the movement and save lives of Nigerians and spare the nation of an estimated annual economic loss of $2.4 billion.
The engagement sought to organize the Private sector operators to help the government out in the efforts at stamping out malaria in Nigeria totally, because the government alone could not succeed without the assistance of the corporate firms.
Also, the Dangote Foundation spearheaded the launch of the document entitled: “Engaging the private sector to eliminate malaria in Nigeria,” the fight against malaria also received a huge boost. The document is a support plan of the federal government on partnering with the private sector to end the malaria scourge by the year 2020.
At the event, the Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, said there was an increasing demand by development partners for domestic funding for malaria. To achieve this, the public-private partnership is crucial and needs to be properly coordinated, he added.
According to him, a multi-pronged approach is required to eradicate malaria from Nigeria. He said despite the large volume of mosquito nets distributed, the prevalence of malaria was still high in the country, urging the private sector to consider seriously the local production of mosquito nets.
He said, “We cannot afford to be importing nets, they can be produced in Nigeria and the market is huge. We need about 30 million nets every year in Nigeria. A net has a life span of about three years and if you compute on the basis of one net for two people, Nigerians would need 90 million nets over three years. Every year, we need to replace 30 million nets, so there is a huge market apart from opportunities for export.”
Now, half the world’s nations are malaria-free, and since 2000, global malaria deaths have dropped by 60 percent. In Africa, where the vast majority of malaria deaths occur, the malaria death rate has come down by more than 70 percent. But there’s still much to do, despite a notable level of attainment in malaria eradication.