Distribution of mosquito nets in Kadiolo, region of Sikasso, Mali June 2020. Credit: PSI, A US based NGO. The UN commemorates World Malaria Day on Sunday April 25.

By Hervé Verhoosel
GENEVA, Apr 23 2021 (IPS)

Despite its 229 million cases and 409,000 deaths in 2019, malaria is an overlooked epidemic. The emergence of COVID-19 has thrown health systems into disarray and forced countries to shift their focus from malaria to the pandemic response, threatening to reverse 20 years of malaria gains.

Now, as we enter the second year of the pandemic, the global response to COVID-19 must not come at the expense of progress against malaria, a preventable and treatable disease. Not only is eliminating malaria possible, but it is also crucial to fighting current and future diseases.

It is vital that the international community remembers that eliminating malaria remains an achievable goal for all countries. Indeed, more countries than ever are either achieving or approaching elimination.

In 2017, as part of the “E-2020 initiative”, the World Health Organization (WHO) identified 21 countries that could defeat malaria by 2020. Spread across five regions of the world, these countries share the ambitious goal of achieving zero indigenous cases of malaria by 2020.

And last year, Algeria, Belize, Cabo Verde, China, El Salvador, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Malaysia all reported zero indigenous malaria cases, achieving their goal, while others made impressive strides forward.

Ridding the world of malaria is a central component of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), linking closely to targets on poverty, inequality, and health and well-being. But as long as it persists, malaria will continue to have a devastating impact on the most vulnerable communities.

Innovation plays a vital role in the elimination of this disease. New tools, such as those being developed by Unitaid and partners, are needed in the face of emerging insecticide and drug resistance. These can only be developed with sustained and significant investment in malaria research.

Hervé Verhoosel. during aa press briefing at the UN in Geneva

Global investments to end malaria have an enormous return on investment. In 2018, they saved 600,000 lives and prevented close to 100 million malaria cases compared to 2000 levels.

In the Asia-Pacific region, weighing against the epidemiological and economic costs of inaction, Wellcome Trust researchers estimated that eliminating malaria by 2030 could save over 400,000 lives, prevent 123 million malaria cases, and lead to a 6:1 return on investment.

These investments also strengthen health systems that are vital to responding to threats such as COVID-19, and help address other vector-borne diseases.

Together with partners, global health agency Unitaid has been supporting the evaluation of the performance of new bed nets under real conditions in malaria-endemic countries to guide policy on their use.

This aims to open a market for these new nets and bring about competition among manufacturers, leading to lower prices and a sustainable tool for countries.

Unitaid also invests to accelerate access to next-generation insecticides to reestablish indoor spraying as a malaria-control measure, and to vary new spray formulas to prevent mosquito populations from growing resistant to them.

Unitaid’s work has also resulted in the delivery of seasonal malaria chemoprevention to over six million children across seven countries in the Sahel, fulfilling more than 25% of the region’s need, while monitoring the safety, efficacy, cost, and public health impact of such programmes at scale.

This World Malaria Day, the global health community must reaffirm its commitment to combat malaria by increasing global investments to prevent, control, and ultimately eliminate this disease. COVID-19 has exposed the weaknesses in health systems around the world. Now is the moment to step up efforts against this preventable disease.

About Unitaid
*Unitaid is a global health agency engaged in finding innovative solutions to prevent, diagnose, and treat diseases more quickly, cheaply, and effectively, in low- and middle-income countries. Our work includes funding initiatives to address major diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis, as well as HIV co-infections and co-morbidities such as cervical cancer and hepatitis C, and cross-cutting areas, such as fever management.

Unitaid is now applying its expertise to address challenges in advancing new therapies and diagnostics for the COVID-19 pandemic, serving as a key member of the Access to COVID Tools Accelerator. Unitaid is hosted by the World Health Organization.

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By Hervé Verhoosel
GENEVA, Mar 13 2019 (IPS)

The bell rings and the halls erupt with the sounds of chatter and excitement as hundreds of children run to the dusty courtyard for recess. I joined them to play football but the game instead turned into a round of questions.

“What is your name? Do you speak Arabic? Where are you from? Do you support Barcelona or Madrid? Or Manchester? Do you play PokemonGo?”

Where am I from? I’m from Belgium. But I know that if I asked this question to some of these children, their response wouldn’t be so simple.

This Friday marks the ninth anniversary of the start of the Syria crisis and, with an average age of around 9, many of the refugee children I spoke to would have a very limited recollection of life in their home country. Some would have no memory at all of their homeland.

Herve Verhoosel

“We’re very proud to be one of the schools working with the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Ministry of Education for the school snacks programme,” he said.

Each day, the children receive a healthy snack such as nuts or fruit and some milk. Overall, WFP’s school feeding programme reached nearly 1.5 million children across Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt last year.

For most of us, it is difficult to understand what it must feel like to be uprooted by conflict. To flee bullets and bombs and leave behind a life, a house, a job, a family, friends, school….

It is estimated that more than 11 million Syrians have left their homes since the beginning of the conflict. Some of them have fled to Europe but many of them – more than 5.6 million – are registered with the UN in what is called the Syria + 5 region, which includes Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt. More than 6 million people remain internally displaced within Syria.

The Syrian conflict continues to drive the largest refugee crisis in the world, and WFP and partners are committed to supporting them in whichever countries they find themselves.

Within Syria, WFP feeds 3.5 million people every month. In the +5 countries, WFP assists 3.3 million Syrian refugees with a combination of food assistance and cash-based transfers.

Most of the refugees in neighbouring countries do not live in formal refugee camps. Instead, they are interspersed throughout towns and cities. Cash-based transfers, which enable them to make choices about what they eat, have injected more than US $2 billion dollars into the local economies of Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and Syria since 2012.

In Turkey – which hosts over 3.7 million Syrian refugees – WFP and partners support refugee families living outside camps with a debit card loaded with cash each month. This is known as the Emergency Social Safety Net or ESSN programme.

The ESSN has reduced by half the number of refugee parents withdrawing their children from school – and it has also led to many fewer parents cutting meals so their children can eat.

After nearly eight years, many Syrian refugees wish to return home and end the cycle of navigating unfamiliar lands, languages, and cultures. In these cases, any return or relocation must be voluntary, safe, dignified and well-informed and in line with minimum protection standards.

For those who do want to go home, most have no houses or jobs to return to – nor do most of them have the means to feed or educate their children.

Syrians returning to their country and communities need support – and they need to work. Unemployment is running at 50 percent overall and is as high as 80 percent among young people.

WFP is helping Syrians produce their own food and generate incomes in areas that are secure where markets are functioning. More, however, needs to be done. The economy needs to be rebuilt.

In the meantime, we need to maintain the vital lifeline of food assistance on which millions of vulnerable Syrians depend. For this to happen, WFP needs an additional US$116 million from now until June 2019.

As for my friends at Abra intermediate school, I hope that they can continue their education so that one day they may realize their potential. I hope they can overcome the all the suffering they have experienced.

I hope that someday soon they can get to know their country so in the future, if someone asks where they are from, they can give a ready answer.

*The third Brussels conference is currently underway, through March 14, on ‘Supporting the Future of Syria and the Region’ , and the 9thanniversary of the Syrian conflict falls on Friday, March 15th.

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Fatima Shooie sits between her 85-year-old mother and 22-year-old daughter who are both receiving treatment for cholera at a crowded hospital in Sana’a. Credit: WHO/S. Hasan

By Hervé Verhoosel
GENEVA, Nov 30 2018 (IPS)

Last week I met with Aamir, a 29-year-old Yemenite, living in Geneva since October 2018 and waiting for his application for asylum to be finalized.

We met outside a café on a brisk, overcast autumn day, where I offered to treat him to a coffee or a tea in exchange for the chance to listen to his story, one that he was worried to share. Worried for his family back in Yemen.

We took a small table amongst the quiet chatter of the café. Although I insisted, he politely declined my offer for the coffee or the tea. He paused for a moment, shifted his eyes away from mine, and began to share his story. A 16-month journey from Yemen to Geneva, via Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Greece – for 14 months in a camp in the Island of Chios – and Italy.

In Yemen, before the conflict Aamir was an electrician by apprenticeship. Now, he is starting over again, beginning first with French classes. Only if his status is fully granted, he will start a 4-year program so he can eventually gain the credentials to practice his trade in Switzerland.

Aamir left the country that he loves. Alone. “People have no food, no job, no more money, and of course no security. The war created all this” he told me. “How can I stay without work, without food, and unsure each day if I will live to see the next. I decided to leave my country, to leave my family and take my chance, far away from that violence…”

Hundreds of millions of people around the world caught up in armed conflict are living stories similar or much worse, having been pushed into hunger because they are stuck in the middle of a fight that is not their own. Some, like him decide to leave the country. Many others stay hoping for help. Your help, our help.

The fact that conflict fuels hunger is no secret. Today, there are 815 million hungry people on the planet- roughly 100 times the population of New York City. 60% of these people (489 million) are living in conflict-stricken areas.

That is almost half a billion people that are more than twice as likely to be undernourished as those living in countries at peace are.

In 2018 conflict and insecurity were the primary drivers of hunger in 18 countries where 74 million people require urgent food aid (Africa: 11 countries (37m) Middle East: 4 countries (27m), Asia: 2 (8m), and the Ukraine).

There is a growing understanding that hunger may also contribute to conflict when coupled with poverty, unemployment or economic hardship. People who have no other options to earn money and thus nothing to lose may be more easily convinced to join armed groups that they otherwise may not have.

This is the reality in Somalia where a study by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) of why people joined Al Shabab found that economic reasons were the biggest single factor. For some people the financial incentives may be the only way they can feed themselves and their families.

In Nigeria, Boko Haram is reported to pay up to US$600 to recruit members to its movement and in recent studies by ISS, economic incentives have been demonstrated to be a stronger driver of recruitment than religious extremism.

I met some of these youths involved in armed groups or violence during my two years living in Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic while working for the UN peacekeeping mission (MINUSCA).

Most of these young people are, in fact, very positive and kind parents, sisters, brothers, who unfortunately reached a point where they have no other way to feed their families- a situation that can be exploited by armed groups.

At times, parties to a conflict may also exploit conflict-induced food insecurity, and attempt to leverage the threat of famine to their advantage – and target farms, markets, mills storage sites and other infrastructure needed for food production and distribution – an act that is condemned and may constitute a war crime.

Once this vicious cycle gains momentum, humanitarian agencies like the UN World Food Programme and partners face increased challenges in stopping it. As conflict-affected regions slip further into violence, access to deliver vital supplies is often severed, leading to more people suffering from hunger, disease, and societal collapse.

Prevention must be at the heart of development. Earlier and longer-term interventions to improve food security and invest in agriculture is one way to address the growing connections between conflict and hunger. In a world where we have the finances and technology to ensure that nobody goes to bed hungry, this goal is more realistic today than it has ever been before.

The final battle against hunger and conflict will occur in the minds of people – our political leaders – and involves tackling the fundamental factors that fuel hunger and conflict.

Until then, WFP will continue to operate every day in Yemen, Somalia, Central African Republic and many of the world’s toughest active conflict zones, delivering food and saving lives. However, it shouldn’t have to be this way.

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By Hervé Verhoosel
GENEVA, Oct 15 2018 (IPS)

How much would you expect to pay for the most basic plate of food? The kind of thing you might whip up at home – nothing fancy, just enough to fill you up and meet a third of today’s calorie needs. A soup, maybe, or a simple stew – some beans or lentils, a handful of rice, bread, or corn?

Credit: World Food Programme

In parts of the developing world, by contrast, food affordability can shrink to the point of absurdity: in South Sudan, a country born out of war and disintegrating into more war, the meal-to-income ratio is 300 times that of industrialized countries.

It is, in other words, as if a New Yorker had to pay nearly US$348.36 for the privilege of cooking and eating that plate of food.

How do people in South Sudan afford it? It’s simple. They don’t.

This is not a unique issue to South Sudan. Across the board, food is becoming ever less affordable in poorer countries that are subject to political instabilities.

Lack of access to food, and the costliness of it, have many causes: climate extremes, natural disasters, post-harvest losses, or bad governance, all of which can damage- or even shatter- farming supply chains and markets.

But, one overriding cause stands out: conflict. At WFP, we’ve long known that hunger and war are tragically symbiotic. Which makes it that much harder to eradicate the one without ending the other.

The 2018 edition of WFPs Counting the Beans: The True Cost of a Plate of Food Around the World index, now spanning 52 countries, underscores this clear correlation between food affordability costs and political stability and security.

The index looks at whether food costs for the original 33 countries analyzed in 2017 have risen or fallen, and compares costs for the same meal in some of the world’s poorest places with one of its richest, by using a New York baseline to highlight vast gaps in global food affordability.

In many countries, it was found that food affordability measured in this way has actually improved since 2017. This is situational, thanks to strong economic growth, political stability, and/or a better rainy season- or in the case of southern Africa- humanitarian assistance helping to offset the effects of severe drought.

Though despite such progress made in many countries through the past year, food costs are often still intensely disproportionate in relation to income. This is the case across much of Africa, as well as in parts of Asia and, to a lesser degree, of Latin America.

Among the countries surveyed for the study, Peru tops the list with the most affordable plate at the NY equivalent of US$ 3.44, just 1.6 percent of per capita income, vs. what that same plate would cost in New York, amounting to 0.6 percent of per capita income.

While Laos and Jordan are close runners-up to Peru, other countries have deteriorated. Almost invariably, these are nations where peace has been (further) eroded by violence, insecurity or political tension, including South Sudan- where the cost of a plate of food has soared from the exorbitant 155 percent of daily income in 2016 (USD $321.70) to 201.7 percent of daily income in 2018 (USD $348.36).

It now costs twice the national daily income to buy a plate of food in South Sudan. Northeast Nigeria took second to last place, at USD $222.05, or 128.6 percent of daily income in 2018, up from USD $200.32, or 121 percent of daily income in 2016.

These abysmal numbers highlight the vast gaps in global food affordability, where 821 million people go hungry while elsewhere one can get a simple nutritious meal with a just a handful of change.

The fact that this still occurs defies both reason and decency, and it’s why we – the World Food Programme and other humanitarian partners – are there.

However, the impact of WFP and other humanitarian actors in saving and changing lives cannot be sustained without political investment, good governance, transparent markets, and wider partnerships.

Societies cannot lift themselves out of the poverty trap if families are continuously priced out of providing their children with the nutritional meals essential for them to develop into healthy and productive adults, if climate degradation continues to threaten food security and development gains, and if protracted conflicts continue to destroy societies and force young talent elsewhere.

With a concerted global effort, the international community can achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals and end hunger and malnutrition. Governments must engage with and support their developing country counterparts in peacebuilding, conflict resolution and disaster risk reduction.

The private sector must embrace that turning a profit can go hand in hand with advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through employing young people to boost incomes, sourcing from smallholder farms, and through working alongside leaders to strengthen supply chains.

The shocking and outraging numbers in this year’s “Counting the Beans” index highlight that peaceful societies and affordable food go hand in hand. We have the modern technological capacities to end world hunger, but first we must end the conflict that fosters it.

Together, we can work towards reversing the figures in this year’s index, and ensure that in the future, nobody will have to work a day and a half to afford a simple meal.

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By Hervé Verhoosel
UN, New York, Apr 27 2016 (IPS)

We have arrived at the point of no return. At this very moment the world is witnessing the highest level of humanitarian needs since World War Two. We are experiencing a human catastrophe on a titanic scale: 125 million in dire need of assistance, over 60 million people forcibly displaced, and 218 million people affected by disasters each year for the past two decades.

Herve Verhoosel

More than $20 billion is needed to aid the 37 countries currently affected by disasters and conflicts. Unless immediate action is taken, 62 percent of the global population– nearly two-thirds of all of us- could be living in what is classified as fragile situations by 2030. Time and time again we heard that our world is at a tipping point. Today these words are truer than ever before.

The situation has hit home. We are slowly understanding that none of us is immune to the ripple effects of armed conflicts and natural disasters. We’re coming face to face with refugees from war-torn nations and witnessing first-hand the consequences of global warming in our own backyards. We see it, we live it, and we can no longer deny it.

These are desperate times. With so much at stake, we have only one choice to make: humanity. Now is the time to stand together and reverse the rising trend of humanitarian needs. Now is the time to create clear, actionable goals for change to be implemented within the next three years that are grounded in our common humanity, the one value that unites us all.

This is why the United Nations Secretary-General is calling on world leaders to reinforce our collective responsibility to guard humanity by attending the first-ever World Humanitarian Summit.

From May 23rd to the 24th, our leaders are being asked to come together in Istanbul, Turkey, to agree on a core set of actions that will chart a course for real change. This foundation for change was not born overnight. It was a direct result of three years of consultations with more than 23,000 people in 153 countries.

On the basis of the consultation process, the United Nations Secretary-General launched his report for the World Humanitarian Summit titled “One Humanity, Shared responsibility. As a roadmap to guide the Summit, the report outlines a clear vision for global leadership to take swift and collective action toward strengthening the coordination of humanitarian and crisis relief.

Aptly referred to as an “Agenda for Humanity,” the report lays out ground-breaking changes to the humanitarian system that, once put into action, will promptly help to alleviate suffering, reduce risk and lessen vulnerability on a global scale.

The Agenda is also linked to the Sustainable Development Goals, which specifically maps out a timeline for the future and health of our world. Imagine the end of poverty, inequality and civil war by 2030. Is it possible? Undoubtedly so. Most importantly, the Secretary-General has called for measurable progress within the next three years following the Summit.

As such, the Summit is not an endpoint, but a kick-off towards making a real difference in the lives of millions of women, men and children. It’s an unprecedented opportunity for global leaders to mobilize the political will to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. So, how to take action?

The Agenda specifies five core responsibilities that the international community must shoulder if we expect to end our shared humanitarian crises. These core responsibilities offer a framework for unified and concentrated action to Summit attendees, leadership and the public at large. Once implemented, change will inevitably follow.

1. Prevent and End Conflict: Political leaders (including the UN Security Council) must resolve to not only manage crises, but also to prevent them. They must analyse conflict risks and utilize all political and economic means necessary to prevent conflict and find solutions, working with their communities – youth, women and faith-based groups – to find the ones that work.

The Summit presents a unique opportunity to gain political momentum and commitment from leaders to promote and invest in conflict prevention and mediation in order to reduce the impacts of conflicts, which generate 80 percent of humanitarian needs.

2. Respect Rules of War: Most states have signed and implemented international humanitarian and human rights laws, but, sadly, few are respected or monitored. Unless violators are held accountable each time they break these laws, civilians will continue to make up the vast majority of those killed in conflict – roughly 90 percent. Hospitals, schools and homes will continue to be obliterated and aid workers will continue to be barred access from injured parties.

The Summit allows a forum for which leadership can promote the protection of civilians and respect for basic human rights.

3. Leave No One Behind: Imagine being forcibly displaced from your home, being stateless or targeted because of your race, religion or nationality. Now, imagine that development programs are put in place for the world’s poorest; world leaders are working to diminish displacement; women and girls are empowered and protected; and all children – whether in conflict zones or not – are able to attend school. Imagine a world that refuses to leave you behind. This world could become our reality.

At the Summit, the Secretary-General will call on world leaders to commit to reducing internal displacement by 50 percent before 2030.

4. Working Differently to End Need: While sudden natural disasters often take us by surprise, many crises we respond to are predictable. It is time to commit to a better way of working hand-in-hand with local systems and development partners to meet the basic needs of at-risk communities and help them prepare for and become less vulnerable to disaster and catastrophe. Both better data collection on crisis risk and the call to act early are needed and required to reduce risk and vulnerability on a global scale.

The Summit will provide the necessary platform for commitment to new ways of working together toward a common goal – humanity.

5. Invest in Humanity: If we really want to act on our responsibility toward vulnerable people, we need to invest in them politically and financially, by supporting collective goals rather than individual projects. This means increasing funding not only to responses, but also to crisis preparedness, peacebuilding and mediation efforts.

It also means being more creative about how we fund national non-governmental organizations – using loans, grants, bonds and insurance systems in addition to working with investment banks, credit card companies and Islamic social finance mechanisms.

It requires donors to be more flexible in the way they finance crises (i.e., longer-term funding) and aid agencies to be as efficient and transparent as possible about how they are spending money.

Our world is at a tipping point. The World Humanitarian Summit and its Agenda for Humanity are more necessary today than ever before. We, as global citizens, must urge our leaders to come together at the Summit and commit to the necessary action to reduce human suffering. Humanity must be the ultimate choice.

Join us at http://www.ImpossibleChoices.org and find more information on the Summit at https://www.worldhumanitariansummit.org.
@WHSummit
@herveverhoosel
#ShareHumanity

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By Hervé Verhoosel
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 3 2015 (IPS)

An issue mostly associated with Africa and Asia, malaria may not initially come to mind when we think of the Americas.

Hervé Verhoosel, Representative in New York & Head of External Relations, Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership

It has been over 60 years since the United States was declared malaria-free, and many countries in the region have made great strides against the disease in recent years, largely making malaria either a thing of the past or an irrelevant topic of discussion.

Yet, as we mark the 9th annual Malaria Day in the Americas on November 6, an estimated 120 million people in the region are at risk of malaria. With so many of these countries nearing elimination targets, we must use this occasion to reflect on the lessons we’ve learned and recommit ourselves to pushing this disease out of the Americas once and for all.

With just weeks left under the Unied Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and a newly adopted 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to take its place, there’s no better time than now.

Since 1998, when the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership was founded, 100 countries worldwide have become free from malaria, over six million malaria-related deaths have been averted and the MDG target for malaria has been achieved and in some cases even surpassed.

This is thanks to global investments – including from regional donors like the US President’s Malaria Initiative and the Canadian government – as well as multilateral mechanisms like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Latin America is no exception to this unprecedented progress. Technical leadership by the the World Health Organisation’s Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and political commitment has helped scale-up interventions that have reduced malaria-related deaths by nearly 78 per cent between 2000 and 2013.

Next year, Argentina may become the second country in the Western Hemisphere to be certified malaria-free – and Costa Rica, El Salvador, Ecuador and Paraguay are not far behind, making the region closer to achieving malaria elimination than ever before.

With the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – including a target to eliminate malaria by 2030 –, we must build on our achievements so that we can save lives and unlock potential in communities across the region.

To answer this call, WHO and the RBM Partnership have developed their respective Global Technical Strategy for Malaria 2016–2030 (GTS) and Action and Investment to Defeat Malaria 2016–2030 – toward a malaria-free world (AIM), which together provide a forward-looking, complementary framework to tailor local strategies and mobilize action and resources to achieve elimination in the next 15 years.

First launched in July at the Third Annual Financing for Development Conference in Addis Abba by the UN Secretary General and several heads of states, this vision will be presented next week at the Ministers of Health meeting in Brazil.

But ambition and strategic vision alone will not carry us across the finish line. We must also ensure the financial underpinning required to deliver on the promise of malaria elimination our leaders have made in the SDGs – something which experts estimate will cost more than 100 billion dollars.

While total international and domestic financing for malaria peaked at 2.7 billion dollars in 2013, current figures show a significant gap in much-needed funding. In Latin America alone – a region positioned to lead the way in global elimination efforts – funding for malaria has decreased from 214 million to 140 million dollars between 2011 and 2013.

Staying on track will require increased financing by the international donor community, as well as increased domestic financing by affected countries. It won’t be cheap, but our front-loaded investment is paltry compared to the consequences of not investing now.

With malaria showing signs of resurgence in places like Venezuela, Guyana and Haiti, largely due to cross-border migration and patchy surveillance systems, a failure to act now places our achievements in jeopardy and threatens broader development efforts of the region.

Beyond being morally compelling, investing in malaria is a solid economic investment. If the financial targets outlined in the AIM are met, nearly 3 billion malaria cases globally will be averted and over 10 million lives saved. These are not simply numbers; they are people that fill classrooms and form a healthy workforce capable of returning more than an estimated 4 trillion dollars of additional economic between 2016-2030.

As we move forward, with our eyes on the finish line, governments in the region must continue – and even increase – their commitment to malaria control, including through multi-sectoral and cross-border collaborations like the Mesoamerica Malaria Elimination Initiative, the Malaria Champions of the Americas and the Amazon Malaria Initiative.

The private sector also has a role to play, through continued investment in their employees and their communities of operation. Expanded efforts will not only help save lives and decrease financial burden to societies and governments, they will also drive regional trade and tourism.

As we join together to commemorate the last Malaria Day in the Americas before transitioning to a post-2015 era, let us remember that we are not malaria-free until we are all free of malaria, and achieving this is critical to achieving the broader development targets set by the SDGs.

We have the tools and knowledge, and now with the GTS and AIM, we are able to learn from past lessons, build on our successes and come together – across borders and sectors – to finally and sustainably achieve malaria elimination.

(End)

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