Increased funding ... no solid news about results

Dear Colleagues

The good news is that there is a high likelihood that there will be increased funding for malaria in 2008 over prior years ... and a further increase in 2009. That is really very good news.

What is interesting is that while most of the funding is coming from official development assistance sources such as bilateral aid agencies like the US President's Malaria Initiative (PMI) and government funding for organizations like the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), there is also substantial assistance funding from private philanthropies like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and initiatives like Malaria No More.

But the not so good news is that the experts are not able to show success in ways that are very satisfying to critics of the programs. Some of the major funding agencies seem to be getting feedback that shows that that there has been an improvements in some of the metrics of success ... such as reduced mortality of children under 5 and reduced mortality of pregnant mothers ... but not as to the reduction of morbidity in the population nor a reduction in the paracite prevalence in the area, both mosquito population and human.

What this means is that even though there has been a tremendous increase in the fund flows into the malaria sector ... progress towards a sustainable reduction in the malaria burden is not yet documented.

From a management perspective, this is, of course a formela for almost certain failure ... if not now, in quite a short time.

Sincerely

Peter Burgess