New methods, vaccines needed to eliminate malaria- WHO

The World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday new methods will be needed to possibly wipe out malaria.

The WHO’s Global Malaria Director, Dr. Pedro Alonso at a press conference said current vaccines are flawed and cannot help achieve this goal.

“We need to have real political leadership and commitment that translates into the financing that is required to ensure universal health coverage for all the population at risk. With the tools we have today, the tools meaning the vector control mechanisms or tools to fight the vector, of the mosquito that transmits malaria, with the type of drugs that we have today, with the type of vaccines that we have today we can go very far”, he said.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the WHO regrets stalling progress in the fight against malaria over the last couple of years.

“In some cases we are witnessing a resurgence of malaria. We’re therefore not on track to achieve our agreed upon goals. And this has led the World Health Organization together with Rollback Malaria Partnership and other major stakeholders, putting countries, the endemic countries at the centre in accelerating our response”, Dr. Alonso added.

Alonso revealed this while presenting the results of a WHO-commissioned report on evaluating if eradicating malaria should be pursued.

He said the experts concluded that ongoing uncertainties meant they were unable to formulate a clear strategy.

Thus, they could not propose a definitive time-line or cost estimate for the eradication.

AP