Uhuru assumes new role, vows to eradicate malaria
President Uhuru Kenyatta on Mondy officially took over as the chairman of the Africa Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA) at State House, Nairobi, with a promise to eradicate the killer disease in 10 years.
The President, who acknowledged that the fight against malaria has recorded significant progress, vowed to drive the agenda of eradicating the disease by 2030.
“With accelerated action and new models to deal with the disease, we can meet the bold and ambitious targets set in the Catalytic Framework to End Aids, TB and eliminate malaria by 2030,” said the Head of State.
The President, meanwhile, highlighted the challenges before him indicating Africa leads in malaria cases at 93 per cent global figure accounting to 213 million cases and 94 per cent deaths (380,000).
“Accelerated Action is therefore, needed particularly in the 10 high burden African Union member states that account for 67 per cent of global malaria cases and 62 per cent deaths,” he said.
The countries include Nigeria, DRC, Uganda, Ivory Coast, Mozambique, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Angola and Tanzania.
To defeat malaria, Uhuru said there is need to mobilise funds, increase engagement of women, children and youth.
“Mobilisation of funds from the public and private sector to address the donor funding stagnation will ensure we fill the current financing gap of around Sh200 billion to Sh300 billion annually,” said Uhuru.
Other measures would address climate change, which is impacting mosquito breeding sites, increase the use of data and technology.
“Address insecticide resistance and the threat of drug resistance, which is leading to increased costs of new commodities,” he said and called for increase in local manufacturing of malaria commodities in Africa.
“Currently, local manufacturing is very limited because of lack of active ingredients from the continent, weak procurement and trade policies and lack of harmonised regulatory regime,” he added.
On his agenda for the next two years as the ALMA chair, Uhuru promised to work with the regional economic communities to engage Heads of State and government.
“This will include the use of innovation and technology to introduce sub-regional scorecards for review and action by Heads of State and Government, share lessons learned and best practices,” he said.
To address the resource gap, Uhuru will strive to establish at least 15 national End malaria Councils and Funds.
Currently, only 13 countries have signed the ALMA campaign with only two ratifying it.
