- Lydia Nwanmu
World Malaria Day: Time to deliver zero malaria: Invest, Innovate, Implement
World malaria day is a global effort by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the international healthcare community to raise awareness and eliminate or prevent the spread of this life-threatening disease. Malaria is a deadly disease caused by plasmodium and transmitted by the female anopheles mosquito. It can be treated with the use of anti-malaria medicines and can be prevented with insecticides, and mosquito nets.
This year, the theme for World Malaria Day is “Time to deliver zero malaria: Invest, Innovate, and implement. The focus is on raising awareness about the need to “implement” the tools and strategies available today to reach parts of the Western Pacific that have major challenges in their efforts to eliminate malaria.
There is a call to “invest” in efforts to defeat malaria by prioritizing funding for the most marginalized and faraway populations who are unable to access health services and are often hardest hit by the illness. Then there is a need to step up “innovation” by bringing new control approaches, diagnostics and medicines to increase the fight against malaria. There is also an urgent need to “implement” strategies now that will make more effective use of available tools required to diagnose, prevent and treat malaria, particularly among unreached populations.
