Roll Back Malaria: a failing global health challenge: Options for malaria control need to be weighed

doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7452.1378-a

BMJ 2004;328:1378 (5 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7452.1378-a

Letter

Roll Back Malaria: a failing global health challenge

Options for malaria control need to be weighed

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Yamey says that only increased support from donorgroups can save the Roll Back Malaria campaign.¹ Three toolsfor malaria control are now offered for donors to support: nets,insecticides, and drugs. We should weigh our options beforeinvesting in each of these tools.

Malaria control programmes heavily based on insecticides areunsustainable by poor countries. Termination of external supportfor such programmes was followed by epidemics of malaria incommunities that had lost their immunity during years of freeinsecticides.²

The bed net programmes in Africa have so far fallen far belowexpectations.¹ With the spread of antimalarial drug resistance,provision of effective treatment is now assuming a more crucialrole in determining the success or failure of malaria control.

Cheap firstline antimalarial drugs have now to be replaced bymore expensive artemisinin based combination treatments. Theseare beyond the abilities of the national malaria programmesin . . . [Full text of this article]

Ahmed A Abdel-Hameed Adeel, professor

Department of Pathology, College of Medicine, King Saud University, P O Box 2925, 11461 Riyadh, Saudi Arabia aadeel@ksu.edu.sa