Delegates representing 194 nations meet for a session of the World Health Assembly in Geneva.

By Charlene Porter
IIP Staff Writer
Washington,
May 20, 2013

World Health Statistics 2013, released by the World Health Organization May 15, shows that the global community has made “dramatic progress” in improving health in the least developed nations.

But those gains are not reasons for complacency. Speaking May 20, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius told the assembly that “ensuring health’s place in the next generation of global development goals” is the challenge that lies ahead.

Representing all the nations of the Americas in her remarks, Sebelius said the United States and its neighbors may have different priorities in ensuring broad access to health care, but all work to the same ends. Providing universal health coverage for all citizens is a goal important to many nations.

“Advancing the health of our nations is a fundamental commitment we make to all our people,” Sebelius said. “As President Obama recently reminded us, access to health care is ‘not some earned privilege — it is a right.’”

The findings of World Health Statistics 2013 indicate nations are making progress in narrowing the disparity between wealthy and least advantaged nations on key markers for overall health.

Data on the last two decades show significant growth in the key health indicator of child survival. While more than 170 deaths occurred per 100,00 births in 1990, by 2011 the fatality rate for infants had declined to 107 deaths per 100,000 births, the report found.

Surveying health data from 194 countries, the statistics also show meaningful declines in maternal deaths and in tuberculosis deaths. Still, the report finds that continued diligence is required to achieve greater access to health care, medicines and vaccinations.

MONITORING H7N9 FLU STRAIN

As those positive developments are considered at the meeting, the potential for an Asian disease outbreak to escalate into a pandemic is a looming concern for many.

H7N9 is a strain of avian influenza that has appeared in humans for the first time and taken 36 lives since early March, when it was first spotted. How and where those afflicted were exposed to the virus is still being investigated. The virus does not yet appear to be transmitted easily between humans. But if the virus mutates to develop that characteristic, there is a risk that pandemic influenza could surge out of China and circle the globe with the speed of a jetliner.

Though that health threat hangs over the annual WHA meeting in Geneva, World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan reminded the delegates in an opening session of the progress made by the global health community in confronting novel viruses and pandemic preparedness.

A previously unknown coronavirus swept out of Asia 10 years ago, spreading rapidly to almost 8,500 people and taking more than 800 lives. After than scare was contained, health officials everywhere recognized that they had to work together and freely exchange information and laboratory findings when confronted with a fast-moving, dangerous pathogen.

In her May 20 remarks, Dr. Chan thanked China for communicating a “wealth of information” about H7N9 in the two months since its appearance.

Sebelius leads the U.S. delegation to the World Health Assembly, which runs to May 28. She will speak at other conference events focusing on violence against women, noncommunicable diseases and medical education, according to her office.

U.S. Secretary for Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius addresses the 66^th World Health Assembly

Development of a rotavirus vaccine may help this Indian child reach adulthood.

By Charlene Porter
IIP Staff Writer
Washington,
May 14,  2013

The vaccine to protect youngsters from rotavirus infection is showing positive results in a Phase III clinical trial involving about 6,800 infants. The Indian Department of Biotechnology and Bharat Biotech announced the success of the vaccine, more than a decade in the making, May 14.

The trial has shown the vaccine — ROTAVAC — reduces severe rotavirus diarrhea by 56 percent in the developing areas where the trial was conducted.

“This is an important scientific breakthrough against rotavirus infections, the most severe and lethal cause of childhood diarrhea, responsible for approximately 100,000 deaths of small children in India each year,” said Department of Biotechnology Secretary K. VijayRaghavan as the announcement was made in New Delhi.

The vaccine is the product of a partnership that brought together Indian, U.S. and international researchers from institutions in the public and private sectors. The origins of the work date to 1999, when the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) provided Bharat Biotech with an initial vaccine strain that the Indian company adapted, creating investigational vaccines for both animal and human clinical studies, according to an NIAID press release.

“The ROTAVAC trial represents a significant victory for India’s scientific community,” said NIAID Director Anthony Fauci in a statement released after the New Delhi announcement. “NIAID is proud to be among the scientific partners who have worked over the past decades to potentially make [rotavirus-caused illness] a thing of the past for the children of India.”

The World Health Organization recommended the inclusion of rotavirus vaccine in the standard array of childhood immunizations several years ago. But that’s been a difficult goal to fulfill in low-resourced countries where cost and inaccessibility to regular preventive health care can prevent the rapid adaptation of innovative treatments.

At about $1 a dose, ROTAVAC will be less expensive than other rotavirus vaccines on the market, helping to lift the cost barrier and allow inoculation of more vulnerable infants. Bharat Biotech has announced that it will soon file for registration and license of the vaccine in India.

“ROTAVAC represents the successful research and development of a novel vaccine from the developing world with global standards,” said Dr. Krishna Ella, chairman and managing director of Bharat Biotech. The drug also demonstrates the company’s “commitment to develop affordable health care solutions.”

ROTAVAC is given to infants in a three-dose course at ages 6 weeks, 10 weeks and 14 weeks. An independent safety board has established that the trial run in three different parts of India was conducted with the highest ethical standards for patient care.

Rotavirus-induced diarrheal disease kills an estimated 435,000 children under 5 years old each year, and hospitalizes about 2 million. The very youngest — between 6 months and 2 years — are at greatest risk. UNICEF recently reported that diarrheal disease causes 11 percent of the deaths of children under 5.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Research Council of Norway and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development were other members of the partnership that produced ROTAVAC.

President Obama and British Prime Minister Cameron leave the stage after their news conference May 13 at the White House, where they talked about various topics, including Syria’s civil war.

By Merle David Kellerhals Jr.
IIP Staff Writer
Washington,
May 13, 2013

British Prime Minister David Cameron met with Obama in the Oval Office at the White House May 13 to discuss trade and economic cooperation, Syria, countering terrorism and priorities for the upcoming Group of Eight (G8) Summit in Northern Ireland, which Cameron will host.

On global development, Obama told journalists at a morning press briefing that he and Cameron were encouraged by the ambitious reforms underway at the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, where both nations have been stepping up efforts. Obama also said that Cameron will make nutrition and food security significant topics for the June G8 Summit.

Obama thanked Cameron for his leadership, partnership and support going into the annual meeting of the world’s largest and most advanced economies.

Britain holds the G8 presidency in 2013, and Cameron will lead the meeting to be held June 17–18 in Enniskillen in Northern Ireland. A significant portion of his Oval Office meeting with Obama was to review the summit agenda.

“I appreciate [Cameron’s] updating me on the agenda as it takes shape, and we discussed how the summit will be another opportunity to sustain the global economic recovery with a focus on growth and creating jobs for our people,” Obama said during a White House press conference.

The G8, which is a forum for the world’s eight wealthiest nations, includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.

Cameron told reporters that open trade will be at the heart of the agenda for ambitious action for economic growth during the G8, but also greater openness for advanced and developing economies. He also said that as nations open up their economies to get business growing, there is an equal need for corporations to pay taxes properly and enable citizens to hold their governments and businesses to account.

“We need to know who really owns a company, who profits from it, whether taxes are paid,” Cameron said. “And we need a new mechanism to track where multinationals make their money and where they pay their taxes so we can stop those that are manipulating the system unfairly.”

Cameron said that he and Obama have championed the development of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the United States and the European Union. He said there’s a real chance now for progress to launch the agreement in time for the G8 in the next five weeks.

Obama said that trade with Britain is central to the United States’ broader trans-Atlantic economic relationship, which supports more than 13 million jobs.

On Afghanistan, Obama said he and Cameron reviewed progress in shifting the security lead to the Afghan National Army.

“As planned, Afghan forces will take the lead for security across the country soon this spring. U.S., British and coalition forces will move into a support role, our troops will continue to come home, and the war will end by the end of next year, even as we work with our Afghan partners to make sure that Afghanistan is never again a haven for terrorists who would attack our nations,” Obama said.

The two leaders also discussed the civil crisis in Syria and “the appalling violence being inflicted on the Syrian people.”

“Together, we’re going to continue our efforts to increase pressure on the Assad regime, to provide humanitarian aid to the long-suffering Syrian people, to strengthen the moderate opposition and to prepare for a democratic Syria without [Syrian President] Bashar Assad,” Obama told reporters.

UNICEF estimates 5.5 million children are trafficked worldwide; tens of thousands are trafficked in the United States.

By Jane Morse | Staff Writer
03 May 2013

Washington — “Nations must speak with one voice,” President Obama has urged, “our children are not for sale.”

And now U.S. government agencies, after years of having operated separate programs to fight human trafficking, are joining forces to more effectively work to end the exploitation of vulnerable children, says Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. secretary of health and human services.

Although the U.S. government has worked for decades to strengthen work being done by outside groups to fight child trafficking, it lacked internal coordination, Sebelius acknowledged May 1 in remarks to the Advisory Council on Child Trafficking, an all-volunteer bipartisan group of women who are committed to finding cost-effective, evidence-based solutions to domestic child trafficking.

“The Justice Department handled enforcement, Homeland Security handled international components, our department [Health and Human Services] handled victim services, and so on. The result of that was that we weren’t being as effective as we could be,” she said. “So we knew that we had to change our approach.”

“We started,” she said, “by ensuring that child trafficking was a priority issue across the federal government. We’ve stepped up our collaborative efforts, and will soon be hosting regular meetings to strengthen coordination between federal agencies.”

On the local level, Sebelius said, the federal government is increasing its coordination with nongovernment groups to draw attention to the crisis of child trafficking. “We’ve also provided in-person training to help empower nearly a thousand front-line responders, in addition to webinars, workshops, videos, newsletters,” she said.

Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. secretary of health and human services

Sebelius said U.S. government agencies are continuing to strengthen their capacity to identify and respond to victims of child trafficking who enter the United States from abroad. More than 700,000 public awareness materials have been distributed by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement, she said.

“Right now, all unaccompanied children who immigrate to the United States alone, and who are placed in our Office of Refugee Resettlement shelters, are screened for trafficking,” Sebelius said. “Last year, 13,600 children were screened. And that number will be even greater this year. When we identify trafficking victims through screenings, we’re able to reach them right away with critical services to help them rebuild their lives. And the stronger our capacity is to identify victims, the closer we come to ensuring that every victim is treated, empowered, and put on a path back to a healthy life.”According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), an estimated 5.5 million children worldwide are victims of forced labor and child trafficking. Thousands of children are trafficked in the United States. The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that as many as 300,000 children are at risk for sexual exploitation each year in the United States.

“The cruelest aspect of child trafficking is the way it can erode children’s sense of their own humanity,” Sebelius said. “When young people are treated as less than human by the adults around them at an age when those cues matter so much, they often can’t help but take that message to heart. Through these public awareness efforts and trainings, we are helping ensure that survivors hear a very different message about their fundamental value as human beings.”

“We live in an age when few issues are black and white, but there is no gray area when it comes to the incomprehensible evil of child trafficking,” Sebelius said. President Obama, she said, has made it clear that his administration is committed to being a leader in a multidisciplinary, partnership-based effort to end this scourge.

Learn more:

See the full transcript of Secretary Sebelius’ remarks at the Health and Human Services website.

To learn what the U.S. Agency for International Development is doing to encourage greater awareness among students about human trafficking, see ChallengeSlavery.org.

Concern about inadequate malaria protections and control gave rise to a major street protest in Kolkata, India, in October 2012.

By Charlene Porter
IIP Staff Writer
Washington,
April 29, 2013

In Geneva and Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the launch of an emergency response to scale up measures to combat what could become a serious global health threat.

The most effective treatment known today is artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACTs). Resistance to artemisinins — the core component of the combination — has now been identified in Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.

Health authorities in Southeast Asia have attempted to contain the resistant strains, but the WHO announcement April 24 declared a need for urgent action to fully eliminate the resistant strains. The action is especially important to preserve ACTs as an effective treatment for the estimated 220 million cases occurring in about 100 countries where malaria is found.

“The consequences of widespread resistance to artemisinins would be catastrophic,” said Dr. Robert Newman, director of WHO’s Global Malaria Programme. “We must act now to protect Southeast Asia today and sub-Saharan Africa tomorrow.”

Artemisinin is derived from an herb native to China. It was developed as an effective treatment for malaria in 1965 after the disease-causing parasite carried by mosquitoes became immune to the most frequently used drug of the time, chloroquine. ACTs are now used in a cocktail of drugs as a means to decrease the risk of resistance.

While research for alternate malaria treatments is underway, ACTs remain the “last, best drug we have available,” said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The action plan the WHO is launching in affected countries will urge governments to pull poor-quality antimalarial drugs from circulation. The use of such drugs can reduce the effectiveness of ACTs, yet they remain in circulation in some regions lacking strict pharmaceutical regulation.

The WHO plan also calls for a thorough assessment of what has been done to contain resistant strains so far and identify what else is necessary.

Frieden’s remarks about the importance of artemisinin came as he testified April 23 before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Global Health.

The subcommittee convened the hearing with a special focus on drug-resistant diseases as a threat to developing countries and to the United States as well. Frieden told the committee that 12 million Americans travel each year to countries where malaria is a health threat.

“If these resistant strains spread, the risk to people in this country will be substantial, in addition to the number of deaths and the amount of suffering and economic hardship that will cause around the world,” said Frieden.

The CDC head said his agency is “quite concerned” about the ACT-resistant strains of malaria, telling the committee that 30 percent of the cases being diagnosed among the people living on the Cambodia-Thailand border are caused by this dangerous strain.

Frieden said stopping the dangerous malaria strain depends on “stopping the mosquito [and] treating effectively, diagnosing and treating well.” The CDC director also said that persistence is critical in malaria control, that is, maintaining mosquito-control efforts even after it seems the disease has declined.

Representative Christopher Smith, a Republican from New Jersey and chairman of the Global Health Subcommittee, pointed out that U.S. contributions to worldwide malaria control efforts have increased from $100 million per year in 2000 to $1.8 billion in 2012.

WHO estimates that 3.3 billion people worldwide are at risk of exposure to malaria every day. Malaria kills about 660,000 people each year, most of them small children in Africa.

Rotary volunteers help distribute vaccine in India, where childhood vaccine must continue in case of a reintroduction of the virus.

By Charlene Porter
IIP Staff Writer
Washington,
April 26, 2013

The long-standing consortium conducting the campaign against this disease — the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) — announced the plan at a vaccine summit held this week in the United Arab Emirates that was hosted by Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, crown prince of Abu Dhabi, and Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

GPEI is backed by the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF and Rotary International. They’ve been working to end polio since the late 1980s and are coming very close to that goal. Hundreds of thousands of cases appeared in more than 100 countries back then. In 2012, just over 223 cases occurred in only three countries — Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. Only 22 polio cases have been reported in 2013 so far.

The April 25 announcement in Abu Dhabi outlined an eradication plan that will target both wild poliovirus and vaccine-derived cases simultaneously. The plan was announced with a large proportion of its expected cost already pledged by global leaders and philanthropists. Eradication in the six-year time frame projected by GPEI is expected to cost $5.5 billion.

“After millennia battling polio, this plan puts us within sight of the endgame,” said WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, expressing confidence in the knowledge, technologies and tactics accumulated over the decades that must eradicate the final and most-difficult -to-reach places the virus might hide.

“The extensive experience, infrastructure and knowledge gained from ending polio can help us reach all children and all communities with essential health services,” Chan said.

Achieving a polio-free status for India over the last few years is a success bringing new energy to the polio endgame campaign. India, the second most populous nation in the world, detected its last case of polio in January 2011. Passing that landmark was a testament to the intense vaccination efforts conducted across both dense urban populations and far-flung rural populations in sometimes difficult-to-reach areas.

“Ending polio will not only be a historic feat for humanity, but also a huge part of our efforts to reach every hard-to-reach child with a range of life-saving vaccines,” said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake.

The Abu Dhabi announcement on the final stages of polio eradication is not about this disease alone. The plan also suggests a pivot for this long-standing campaign, applying its experience and resources to building immunization systems in high-priority countries.

The newest GPEI drive is “a global immunization plan with the goal of ending polio while improving efforts to protect all children, including the most vulnerable, with life-saving vaccines,” said Bill Gates. He said the plan can deliver “a polio-free world and pay dividends for future generations.”

The vaccine summit ended with commitments for about $4 billion to support polio eradication, much of it from philanthropists who are making their first investment in polio eradication. They include: the Albert L. Ueltschi Foundation, the Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Carlos Slim Foundation, the Dalio Family Foundation, the Tahir Foundation and the Foundation for a Greater Opportunity.

The United States, a partner in the polio eradication effort since the beginning, has invested more than $2 billion to rid the world of a disease that has killed and crippled people for millennia. Rotary International reports that it has raised about $9 billion from governments since 1988.

USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah explains the importance of public-private partnerships to reporters during a trip to Rangoon

By Kathryn McConnell
IIP Staff Writer
Washington,
April 25, 2013

Obama is asking Congress to approve $20.4 billion for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), 6 percent below the amount enacted for each of the last two years, and $898.2 million for the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), the same amount requested for 2013. Fiscal year 2014 begins October 1.

Congressional committees will weigh the requests and send their recommendations to the full Senate and the full House of Representatives. Each of those bodies will determine its recommendation. Representatives of the Senate and the House then will negotiate a final recommendation to be sent to the president for signature or veto. The process could take several months.

USAID

Testifying April 24 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a House Appropriations subcommittee, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah said the president’s request for USAID would support the agency’s work with major international partnerships, including the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition and the Child Survival Call to Action.

Shah testified along the same lines April 25 before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. He was joined that day by MCC Chief Executive Officer Daniel Yohannes.

Shah said the budget request would provide $269 million for the president’s commitment to the New Alliance to unlock the potential of agricultural growth. The alliance aims to lift 50 million people out of poverty by 2014.

The 2014 request supports the goals of creating an AIDS‐free generation, ending preventable child and maternal death, and protecting communities from infectious diseases, Shah said. He said the requested budget would scale up high‐impact HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment methods and provide $1.65 billion to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The proposal would bolster USAID’s work on human rights and governance, with an emphasis on marginalized groups, including women and youth, Shah said. It would allow USAID to continue to support democratic and economic transitions and provide humanitarian assistance, and allow USAID to help areas experiencing recurrent crises and natural disasters to build resilience.

The budget request includes funding to mobilize a new generation of innovators and scientists. Through its Development Innovations Venture, USAID invites innovators to contribute cost-effective and cutting-edge ideas for solutions to development challenges that could benefit millions of people, Shah said.He explained that the budget request would accelerate USAID’s Higher Education Solutions Network, in which academically based innovation laboratories in the United States work with global partners to develop solutions. The network is leveraging millions of university and private-sector dollars, Shah said.

Other partnerships Shah described are the Development Credit Authority, which in fiscal 2013 leveraged $383 million from the private sector for investments in entrepreneurs around the world, and the Global Climate Change Initiative, which brings private-sector investment to help countries transition to climate-resilient, low-emission economic growth.

Shah said USAID wants to continue to close gaps between girls’ and boys’ access to quality education. It wants to help 100 million children improve their reading skills by 2015 and make access to education more equitable for children in crisis environments, he said.

The administrator said a good example of USAID’s efforts to become more efficient and effective is a proposal in the budget request to reform U.S. food aid. The proposal would make the aid more flexible by devoting up to 45 percent of aid resources to procuring food from local producers and providing food aid recipients with cash transfers and electronic vouchers to purchase food for their families.

“At a time of urgent human need and budget constraints, we can save more lives without asking for more money,” Shah said.

MCC

The budget request for MCC would support funding for the five countries that the agency in December 2012 determined qualified to submit proposals for multiyear agreements, Yohannes said.

To qualify for MCC funding, countries are required to practice sound polices and build strong institutions. Results of independent evaluations of countries’ performance are published online. Yohannes said other countries are taking notice and enacting reforms so they too can become eligible for MCC assistance.

The fiscal 2014 budget would support MCC’s active agreements, or compacts, in 15 countries, and short-term funding for two countries, Yohannes said.

Young people took a stand against malaria during the closing ceremony of the African Cup of Nations soccer tournament in February.

By Charlene Porter
IIP Staff Writer
Washington,
April 25, 2013

“Since PMI’s launch in 2005, impressive gains in malaria control have been documented in PMI focus countries,” according to the findings released by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in recognition of World Malaria Day April 25.

“Invest in the Future: Defeat Malaria” is the 2013 rallying cry for the community of malaria fighters worldwide, which includes USAID, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank, the U.K. Department for International Development, UNICEF and many nongovernmental organizations.

“It is unacceptable that every day more than 1,500 children still die from a preventable and curable disease,” said Nicholas Alipui, UNICEF’s director of programs. “We must distribute insecticide-treated nets to all who need them, provide timely testing for children and appropriate medicine when they are infected.”

Bed nets protect sleeping people from biting mosquitoes, which transmit the disease-causing parasite to humans. Fewer than 5.6 million people in sub-Saharan Africa slept under bed nets in 2005, but now more than 140 million sleep with nets, UNICEF reports, due to the efforts of many contributing nations and organizations.

The President’s Malaria Initiative has distributed more than 62 million bed nets since 2006, and helped other donors distribute almost 13.5 million bed protectors.

WHO estimates that malaria caused 219 million cases of disease in 2010, leading to 660,000 deaths. But in the almost 10-year accelerated campaign against malaria, it is estimated that 1.1 million lives have been saved from premature death.

The tropical regions where the parasite-carrying mosquito is a health threat are home to 3.3 billion people. The new USAID report says that burden of illness accounts for 30 to 40 percent of outpatient visits and hospital admissions. Easing that case load “enables overstretched health workers to concentrate on managing other childhood illnesses,” the report says.

USAID documents that the U.S. malaria program has contributed to a sharp decline in childhood deaths in a number of sub-Saharan countries:

• 50 percent reduction in Rwanda.

• 50 percent in Senegal.

• 37 percent in Mozambique.

• 36 percent in Kenya.

WHO reports that an estimated 91 percent of malaria deaths in 2010 were in Africa, followed by Southeast Asia with 6 percent. Worldwide, 86 percent of malaria deaths were in children.

The risk of malaria is declining and more children are surviving, but a long-term malaria threat still lurks in the future. A strain of the malaria parasite has appeared in some areas with resistance to what have been the most effective medicines to fight them. Cases caused by the resistant strain require more expensive, less accessible medicines to cure a patient.

And some fear that the parasite may ultimately become resistant to everything that doctors currently have in the medicine cabinet.

A child dies every minute from malaria.

By Technical Sergeant Olufemi A. Owolabi
U.S. Africa Command
Stuttgart, Germany,
April 23, 2013

That idea prompted countries further west to start their West Africa Malaria Task Force.

On April 24, U.S. representatives, experts in malaria programs and chiefs of medical services from eight nations of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) will come together to share knowledge, experiences and best practices during a three-day meeting of the West Africa Malaria Task Force in Accra, Ghana.

“We are excited about partnering with the eight African nations who are participating,” said U.S. Navy Captain David Weiss, command surgeon for U.S. Africa Command. “We’ll share best practices about how to treat malaria, which adversely impacts all of our forces in West Africa. This is a great opportunity for all of us, and I truly believe that we are stronger together as partners.”

The West Africa Malaria Task Force will meet in conjunction with the World Health Organization’s World Malaria Day, observed every year on April 25. The event will be attended by medical and military representatives from Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Liberia, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Togo.

The task force is a regional African initiative, supported by U.S. Africa Command. The goal is to develop solutions to malaria challenges. U.S. Africa Command personnel who specialize in malaria will partner with Africans and will help facilitate ideas and strategy sessions in support of the task force.

“The task force is their idea,” said Dr. Refaat Hanna, U.S. Africa Command epidemiologist and a public health specialist with the command surgeon’s office. “The intent is to discuss and share results of the military malaria program gaps and leverage resources available through the [U.S.] President’s Malaria Initiative in West Africa.”

PMI is a five-year, $1.2 billion expansion of U.S. Government resources to reduce the impact of malaria and to help address poverty in Africa.

“Malaria is the leading cause of death in Africa,” Hanna said. “Ninety percent of worldwide malaria cases are diagnosed in sub-Saharan Africa. It has a great impact on the health and productivity of Africans. It is the most common reason for hospital visits, with most patients being children and pregnant women.”

The task force will open with African representatives discussing the results of their malaria program gap analysis. U.S. experts will then brief the task force on Defense Department malaria vaccine programs. Briefings will highlight challenges and lessons learned in protecting U.S. troops against malaria, followed by opportunities to offer the member nations possible solutions to their identified problems.

The leveraging of resources already available to African countries through the PMI to support African militaries will also be discussed. This part of the discussion will be led by members of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), who work as part of the U.S. government interagency team at U.S. Africa Command.

African countries “are very clever in treating malaria,” Doctor Hanna said. “The role of U.S. Africa Command is to coordinate between the U.S. agencies and the African partners. The meeting provides an opportunity to exchange knowledge, experiences and best practices. We are trying to help by coming together to develop protocols for treating different cases.”

“It’s an opportunity for us to see what the eight nations in Africa are doing for malaria programs,” Captain Weiss said. “The hope is we can learn from each other. This program is about Africans learning from each other on how they can develop solutions that address the impact of this devastating disease.”