The Menace of Malaria - GSK

Feared since the days of the Roman Empire, malaria remains a major health problem. GlaxoSmithKline is supporting several major programmes to answer the challenge. The humble mosquito may be tiny, but it carries some of the worst diseases in the world and kills more people than any other animal. The aim of World Malaria Day is to provide education and understanding of malaria as a global scourge that is preventable and a disease that is curable. One of those diseases is malaria, an infection caused by a parasite that is carried from person to person by the bites of female mosquitoes. The symptoms of malaria include fever, shivering, vomiting and it also leads to anaemia. If left untreated, malaria can cause coma and death. The scale of the problem is huge - over 40 per cent of the world’s population lives in areas affected by malaria and a million people a year die from its effects, mostly children under five years of age and pregnant women. Malaria is the world's leading cause of childhood mortality, killing one child every 30 seconds... Along with tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, malaria is one of the World Health Organization's 'priority' diseases and it's not difficult to understand why. About 90 per cent of acute malaria infections occur in sub-Saharan Africa, and the World Bank reports that malaria costs the continent more than US$12 billion yearly in healthcare expenditures and lost productivity, a figure roughly equivalent to all of the aid provided to the continent each year. Some say that this puts much of the debate about helping Africa to prosper through aid and trade into stark perspective – simply stopping malaria would be an enormous boost.

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Contributor: Anuradha Bhattacharjee
Published Date: April 28, 2008