S.r.l. Impresa Sociale, Italy
On the 50th anniversary of the WHO declaration of malaria-free Italy, national and international institutions engaged in the fight against malaria meet to discuss the contribution of scientific research to the eradication of malaria, particularly in Africa. Webconference link and agenda: https://bit.ly/3pT6WjG
In this article published by Nature, Prof. Francine Ntoumi addresses how the efforts to tackle Covid-19 are consequently and tragically neglecting all other diseases, for which it is estimated that all the important achiviements in terms of reducing of these recent years will be lost https://go.nature.com/2Kui5as
“This project will improve malaria prevention strategies for both children, pregnant women and families as a whole as the study is being conducted in families which will raise awareness of malaria prevention. Furthermore, the proposed strategy can reduce the high risk estimated by the WHO that deaths from malaria double as a result of the interruption of interventions due to the Covid-19 pandemic “, are the words of the evaluators appointed by the European Commission (EDCTP) to examine the INTEGRATION project proposal.
Trusting in a positive outcome, the consortium of African and European researchers who developed the project proposal (Mali, Burkina Faso, France, U.K. and Italy) is now committed to providing further information and clarification to the assessors, who will complete the evaluation in January 2021.
In Africa, pregnant women and young children are the most vulnerable to malaria.
However, malaria control interventions and strategies have achivied important results in the last years.
COVID-19 has now made these interventions critical, and could undo the results obtained so far, as highlighted by scientists in the Lancet: https://bit.ly/2Tfyxwn.
Potentially, COVID-19 could indirectly cause more deaths than it already does directly, in the context of Africa’s weak and fragile health systems.
Pregnant women, babies and children under 5 years of age are the most vulnerable to malaria. In 2018, around 11 million pregnant women and 24 million children got malaria. Furthermore, the WHO estimates that due to Covid-19 there will be disruptions in the fragile national health systems that could lead to a doubling of malaria mortality this year, from 400,000 to about 800,000 deaths, more than those from Covid-19 itself.
INTEGRATION project is an intervention that strategically integrates malaria prevention treatments for pregnant women and children to change African national health prevention policies and protect millions of pregnant women from malaria every year.
INTEGRATION project has been developed by a consortium of universities, research institutes and NGO from 2 African countries (Burkina Faso and Mali) and 3 European countries (France, England and Italy), which submitted this research project to the European Commission (EDCTP).
Donne in gravidanza, neonati e bambini sotto i 5 anni di età sono i più vulnerabili alla malaria. Nel 2018, circa 11 milioni di donne in gravidanza e 24 milioni di bambini si sono ammalati di malaria. Inoltre, l’OMS stima che a causa del Covid-19 ci saranno disfunzioni nei fragili sistemi sanitari africani che potrebbero portare quest’anno a un duplicarsi della mortalità per malaria, passando da 400.000 a circa 800.000 morti, ben di più di quelli causati dal Covid-19 stesso.
INTEGRATION è un intervento che integra strategicamente i trattamenti di prevenzione della malaria per donne in gravidanza e bambini, in modo da potenzialmente cambiare le politiche di prevenzione sanitaria in Africa e proteggere dalla malaria per milioni di donne in gravidanza ogni anno.
INTEGRATION è nato da un consorzio di università, istituti di ricerca e ONG di 2 paesi africani (Burkina Faso e Mali) e 3 paesi europei (Francia, Inghilterra e Italia), che hanno presentato questo progetto al bando di ricerca alla Commissione Europea (EDCTP).
INTEGRATION+ is an implementation research focused on malaria in pregnancy, with the potential to change national health prevention policies to protect an additional 13 million pregnant women each year from malaria. A consortium of universities and research institutions from 6 African countries and 2 European countries applied to fund this project to European Commission (EDCTP) and USA (PMI).
R-Evolution Worldwide Community Interest Company participated as observer to the 15th WHO meeting of the Malaria Policy Advisory Committee (MPAC). The meeting highlighted how in the last couple of years the malaria incidence stopped to decrease and begun to increase, especially in the 10 countries with the highest burden of malaria. According to the World malaria report 2018, indeed, there were 219 million cases of the disease in 2017, compared to 217 million the year before. Every two minutes, a child dies of malaria. In 2017, the estimated global tally of malaria deaths stood at 435.000. All the 10 countries with the highest malaria burden are in Africa: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Uganda and United Republic of Tanzania.