Date: 2024-10-11 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00004672
Malaria
World Malaria Day 2013
The Financial Times published a Special Report on Combating Malaria for World Malaria Dat 2013 ... in which the US position on the role of the private sector and the Affordable Medicines Facility for malaria (AMFm) is criticized.
Burgess COMMENTARY
I was active with a group called Integrated Malaria Management Consortium for a period of time, and in the process learned a lot about the history of malaria control and the activities of the various organizations engaged in malaria control in the recent few years. My interest in malaria control continues, but now more simply around the issue of metrics that make it possible to say with some certainty, this is what something costs and this is the value of the associated outcomes.
The article in the Financial Times (FT) referred to in the exchange reported below show how difficult it is to make the case that what is being done is the best way to do it ... or not. So much of the measurement is done in a way that, in the end, there are arguments more about opinion and ideology than on the easily understood facts about something.
In the course of the last two weeks I have been modestly engaged with the events surrounding World Malaria Day 2013, including attending a UN event in New York organized by the WHO's Roll Back Malaria campaign. At this luncheon, I raised the question about the value of the outcomes from an expenditure of some $10 billion over the past few years. The various speakers responded to this in a very positive way, because the value is certainly big enough to justify the expenditure.
I did not raise the question of whether or not the same outcome could have been achieved with an expenditure considerably less ... though many in the room knew that this would have been my follow up question in an more analytical setting.
Nor did I raise the question of whether or not the approach being used has any sort of sustainability in a world where public and philanthropic funding is unlikely to be flowing as easily in the future as it has in the past.
In my own view, the state of society is improved when there are substantial malaria control interventions. The progress will be better when the performance of malaria control interventions are the most effective and most efficient.
Peter Burgess