Sustaining the Gains and Addressing the Threats and Challenges for the Continuum from Malaria Control to Elimination

Abstract

Copyright: © 2015 Talisuna AO . This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. In 2007, Bill and Melinda Gates, at a malaria forum in Seattle, USA, literally shocked the global malaria community when they made a clarion call to eliminate (reduce incidence to zero in a given geographical location) and ultimately eradicate malaria (reduce incidence to zero globally) [1]. This clarion call was followed up by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Roll Back Malaria Partnership (RBM) through the development of the global malaria action plan (GMAP) 2008-2015, with a critical message to Scale Up For Impact (SUFI) [2]. Thanks to major funding bodies such as the Global Fund to fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the United States Presidents Malaria Initiative (PMI), the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and several bilateral and multi-lateral donors, the scale-up of malaria interventions during the last decade has contributed to a broad shift in malaria epidemiology and transmission intensity globally. Several countries have seen big reductions in malaria, but there are also others where the disease remains stubbornly high [3]. The changing epidemiology of malaria has resulted in diverse ambitions with some countries aiming at elimination, yet for others malaria elimination is currently not technically, operationally or financially feasible as they must first sustain the path of scaling up for impact in order to reduce the disease burden.