British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne and tech billionaire Bill Gates yesterday unveiled a plan to spend billions of pounds to eradicate “the world’s deadliest killer” malaria.
Osborne and Gates announced £3 billion (US$4.28 billion) in funding over the next five years for research and to support efforts to eliminate the mosquito-borne disease, in a joint article in the Times.
“When it comes to human tragedy, no creature comes close to the devastation caused by the mosquito,” the two wrote. “We both believe that a malaria-free world has to be one of the highest global health priorities.”
The fund would be made up of £500 million per year from Britain’s overseas aid budget for the next five years, as well as US$200 million this year from The Gates Foundation, with more donations to follow.
There were 438,000 malaria deaths last year, most of them of children aged younger than five, and the majority of them in Africa, according to the WHO.
Efforts to control the disease have made significant progress in the past 15 years, but are threatened by the spread of resistance to anti-malarial drugs and to insecticide, the WHO said in its World Malaria Report last year.
“If new insecticides are not introduced by 2020, the situation will become critical and deaths could surge,” Osborne and Gates wrote, adding that fighting diseases required collaboration between private companies, governments and charities.
“We are optimistic that in our lifetimes we can eradicate malaria and other deadly tropical diseases, and confront emerging threats, making the world a safer place for all,” the article concluded.
Microsoft co-founder Gates has turned his attention from software to fighting disease and other ills around the world with his wife, under the auspices of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The charity has disbursed more than US$28 billion and provided funding for the world’s most clinically advanced malaria vaccine, Mosquirix, developed by GlaxoSmithKline.
Mosquirix is the first malaria vaccine to reach Phase III clinical testing — the final stage before market approval — and the first to be assessed by regulators. It received a nod from European regulators in July last year.
A WHO expert panel in October last year recommended pilot trials of the vaccine involving young children in several areas of sub-Saharan Africa, before considering wider use.
The WHO is expected to follow the panel’s recommendations, which could result in Mosquirix becoming the first licensed vaccine against a parasitic disease. However, a decision still lies a way off.
The announcement comes days after Gates revealed plans for a US$100 million scheme to cut malnutrition in Nigeria.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema