3,000 Die Each Day From Malaria

Malaria is killing 3,000 people a day and the toll is rising, according to figures released today.

Malaria kills more than 1 million people a year, 90% in Africa, according to a report in the British Medical Journal. A concentrated effort is desperately needed, say public health experts quoted in the article.

"Essentially, Africa is facing a catastrophe equivalent to [the deaths caused by] 9/11 every day, which is being almost ignored and totally under-funded.

"Poor people are not getting access to medicines and bed nets which are available at minuscule costs in comparison to what is spent on other global activities," said David Molyneux of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, an author of the article.

Medicines and prevention tools exist, but are not reaching the poor people in remote areas of Africa who need them most. With people in some countries living on $1 (56p) a day, the drugs to treat malaria must be free, the report argues.

The United Nations Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria has allocated $30m for malaria treatments in 45 African countries, but that is not nearly enough to provide effective medicines to the more than 300 million cases of malaria each year, the authors argue.

The "Roll Back Malaria" initiative, launched by the World Health Organisation in 1998, set out to halve malaria deaths by 2010. But so far the deaths have increased.