New initiative to boost malaria control and combat insecticide resistance
Unitaid and IVCC (Innovative Vector Control Consortium) today announced an initiative to expand the use of new anti-malarial insecticides to maintain the important role of mosquito control in combating malaria.
The US $65.1 million initiative, Next generation Indoor Residual Spray, will support countries in obtaining new and effective insecticides at lower prices to spray walls in homes and fight growing insecticide resistance. Over four years, the project aims to protect as many as 50 million people from malaria in 16 African countries. Despite its effectiveness in combating malaria, indoor spraying of walls has fallen by 40 per cent in the past four years due to increased resistance to older products and higher cost of new alternatives.
Unitaid and IVCC will team up with the US President’s Malaria Initiative, Abt Associates, PATH and the Global Fund to work with industry and country malaria-control programmes to make alternative insecticides with high efficacy more readily available in countries with a high burden of malaria. The initiative will use a co-payment from Unitaid to bring down the price of these new and more effective products in the short term. A further aim is to reduce the cost of procuring products in the long term through improved forecasting and increased competition among manufacturers.
“The initiative is about bolstering the central role of insecticides in controlling malaria. If the resistance continues to spread unabated, there could be 120,000 more deaths from malaria a year. Unless newer insecticides are used, we run the risk of considerable reversals in the fight against malaria,” said Lelio Marmora, Executive Director of UNITAID. “This is the first of many other initiatives by Unitaid to control the spread of malaria-transmitting mosquitoes.”
“Recent evidence has shown that insecticides are the first line of defence against malaria, responsible for nearly 80 per cent of malaria cases averted since 2000. We are working with our industry partners to bring to market as soon as possible novel insecticides that are in the pipeline,” said Nick Hamon, CEO of IVCC. “This project with Unitaid will help maintain the effectiveness of vector control in the short term and encourage competition as prices decrease and demand grows.”
Dr Pedro Alonso, Director of the World Health Organization’s Global Malaria Programme said, “Effective vector control is a cornerstone of our global strategy for malaria. It is responsible for many of the gains seen over the last decade in malaria control and elimination. We welcome this joint initiative to accelerate the development and deployment of new insecticides and vector control tools.”
“The U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative is pleased to partner with Unitaid and IVCC to boost malaria control by developing and bringing new and effective insecticides at lower prices to spray walls in homes and fight growing insecticide resistance,” said Rear Admiral USN (ret) Tim Ziemer, the U.S. Global Malaria Coordinator. “PMI will continue to support the research and development of insecticides for malaria control and work with partners to bring to market new vector control tools to accelerate progress in malaria control and elimination.”
Media Contact
– Jed Stone (IVCC): jed.stone@ivcc.com or +44 780 350 4084
– Andrew Hurst (Unitaid)
About Unitaid
About IVCC
IVCC is a not-for-profit public-private partnership, established in 2005, to save lives, protect health and increase prosperity in malaria endemic areas. It works closely with global industry partners and scientists to develop novel vector-control tools. http://www.ivcc.com
Unitaid targets preventative malaria therapy in pregnant women in grant proposals call
Unitaid has launched a call for proposals for grants to support increased access for pregnant women to intermittent preventive treatment of malaria.
Coverage is lagging in Africa, putting pregnant women and their babies at risk, despite WHO recommendations that all pregnant women in areas of moderate to high malaria transmission should get treatment.
More than 40 percent of pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa are not being reached by preventive treatment for malaria. As a result, up to 200,000 deaths of newly born babies are linked to malaria infections during pregnancy.
The call follows an announcement earlier this month by the Executive Board of Unitaid to focus malaria investments in three areas: expanding access to preventive therapy in pregnant women; accelerating adoption of new tools to fight emerging mosquito resistance to insecticide and accelerating introduction of emergency treatments for life-threatening severe malaria.
By defining clear areas for intervention to guide its work, Unitaid is ensuring that its grants drive innovation in support of global health goals and are more focused and efficient in a way that achieves more impact with scarce resources.
A big barrier to intermittent preventive treatment is the result of low demand by health workers and pregnant women, reflecting among other things doubts among health workers over the efficacy of the drug sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) which is recommended by WHO for use in the treatment.
Under the latest call, Unitaid is requesting proposals for two specific interventions with the aim of securing a big increase in access to preventive therapy in pregnant women. The interventions seek to:
- Generate evidence for innovative approaches to delivery and demand generation, to support global guidance and scale-up;
- Support adequate supply of SP, including adapted packaging.
The deadline for proposals is 22 February 2016.
Unitaid welcomes new UK fund to fight malaria, TB and other neglected tropical diseases
UNITAID strongly welcomes the creation by the United Kingdom of a new 1 billion pound sterling fund to tackle malaria, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.
The fund, to be known as the Ross Fund, will enable the development and testing of vaccines, drugs, diagnostics, treatments and other technologies to help combat some of the world’s most serious infectious diseases in developing countries, including Ebola.
The Ross Fund was launched this week by UK Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) George Osborne. The fund is named after Sir Ronald Ross, who discovered that malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes.
The Fund will also focus on the global fight to eradicate malaria, and will partner with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in this work.
“The establishment of a fund by the UK targeting malaria, TB and also encompassing Ebola and neglected tropical diseases is a most welcome step,” said UNITAID Executive Director Lelio Marmora. “UNITAID supports efforts to find health solutions to help accelerate the end of AIDS, TB, malaria and other infectious diseases.”
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Unitaid s’appuie sur ses récits et approches sur les maladies pour orienter ses investissements
Unitaid s’efforce de maximiser son impact sur la santé en investissant dans les personnes les plus exposées aux maladies et les plus démunies.
Un des principaux objectifs d’Unitaid est d’identifier comment contribuer au mieux à la riposte mondiale par des investissements bien ciblés aidant, par exemple, à surmonter des obstacles spécifiques tels que les prix élevés de médicaments prometteurs.
Ces « domaines d’intervention », qui désignent les domaines dans lesquels les investissements d’Unitaid peuvent apporter la contribution la plus efficace à la réalisation des objectifs de santé mondiale visant à mettre fin au VIH/SIDA, à la tuberculose et au paludisme, sont les pierres angulaires de notre travail. Ils permettent également à nos partenaires d’obtenir de meilleurs résultats avec des ressources limitées.
Le choix de chaque domaine d’intervention d’Unitaid s’appuie sur une analyse rigoureuse du contexte de chaque maladie, contenue dans un récit cohérent sur la maladie.
Les récits permettent d’analyser chaque maladie, y compris le fardeau global de la maladie, les stratégies mises en œuvre pour atteindre les objectifs de santé mondiale, les actions des partenaires dans la poursuite de ces objectifs, l’ampleur des éventuelles lacunes dans la réponse et les possibilités d’intervention d’Unitaid.
Ils apportent un cadre, un contexte et une échelle de priorités aux interventions d’Unitaid, et font ressortir les opportunités potentielles pour mener à bien les activités des partenaires et soutenir la réalisation des objectifs de santé mondiale.
Sur la base du récit sur la maladie et après avoir consulté ses partenaires, Unitaid recense chacun des domaines dans lesquels elle peut intervenir et les propose au Conseil pour validation. Unitaid lance ensuite des appels à propositions auprès des bénéficiaires potentiels des financements, après avoir identifié des interventions spécifiques dans chaque domaine.
Un certain nombre de défis communs ont été identifiés au travers de plusieurs récits portant sur des maladies spécifiques ; ces défis transversaux peuvent bénéficier de solutions communes. Ils sont identifiés par le biais de documents expliquant la démarche – le premier étant l’approche d’Unitaid en matière de propriété intellectuelle
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