Many of these commentators have been bluntly critical of the international community's response to malaria. There are bountiful statistics to buttress this criticism, with which most of you are familiar. Malaria causes more than 2 million deaths a year, principally among children and infants. Ninety percent of these deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa. Between 300 and 500 million people now get malaria each year.
Someone dies from malaria about every fifteen seconds.
During the last decade, malaria has killed about ten times as many children as all the wars in that period combined. Despite these grim statistics, the international community has had difficulty marshalling resources to combat malaria. While figures vary, it is clear that spending on malaria control and research remains very low, especially when you look at the number of fatalities caused by the disease. We aren't doing enough, and that has to change. We have to do a better job combatting not only malaria, but a range of other infectious diseases, or we will risk seeing important economic gains in the developing world undone by a growing public health crisis.