KEY POINTS:
Five-year-old Prince Mafunga lay contorted with pain. For two days his temperature had hovered around 40C, his little body curled up on a thin mattress in a hut on the outskirts of Kariba, Zimbabwe. Sweat poured from his brow and tears from his eyes.
Consumed by malaria, the
first hours of pain and panic were eventually overcome by resignation. Prince Mafunga had been here before - four times in the past nine months.
On the third day his mother took time off work, borrowed money and travelled three hours by bus to the nearest hospital.
"There is a fear you see in a child's eyes when they are in that much pain," says Mrs Mafunga. "I think it is a mother's fear being reflected."
It took Prince eight days before he recovered in a packed hospital ward filled with men, women and children, some convulsing from malaria or listlessly slipping into malarial comas.
And yet Prince is one of the lucky ones. His young body was able to fight off one of the most dangerous child killers on Earth - millions have not been so lucky.
Malaria has been a scourge of humanity since antiquity. Every year it kills more than 3 million people.
Scientists believe there are about 515 million cases of malaria per year, which puts about a third of the world's population at risk.
The United Nations Children's Fund estimates that today alone 3000 children will die because of it - the lion's share in sub-Saharan Africa.
Many who survive are often left with brain disease or paralysis.
It is a global outrage that dwarfs Aids, the Indian Ocean tsunami or any current conflict, yet we barely register its existence.
Malaria has never captured the public imagination like Aids, even though children are its chief victims.
Malaria is old and Aids is new. And malaria is not a disease that affects us in New Zealand, whereas AIDS threatens us all.
The tragic thing is that hundreds of thousands of children have died needlessly. Even though it is a rampant killer of children under 5 it is also one of the most preventable.
For just a few dollars, children could sleep safely under long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets. Present use of such bed nets in Africa remains low, with many places having only 10 per cent coverage or less.
The leading economist Jeffrey Sachs believes eradicating malaria is the most important priority in lifting Africa out of poverty.
"Comprehensive malaria control in Africa is achievable by 2010, at the minimal cost of US$3 billion [$3.9 billion] per year, if sound principles of public health and economics are observed, Mr Sachs says.
"Millions of lives can be saved, and Africa will be given vital help in escaping from the vicious circle of poverty and disease that continues to grip the continent."
As so often happens, it comes down to a lack of money. The fight against malaria has been chronically under-funded although there have been some recent boosts in spending thanks to the UNGlobal Fund for Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria and also from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
However, this is not enough and the United Nations estimates another billion dollars needs to be added to the coffers annually to make a serious dent in the disease.
We are at the half way point of the Millennium Development Goals, a target set by the UN to halt absolute poverty by 2015. But in terms of malaria eradication Africa is sliding backwards.
The disease is killing more children than at any other time in the last hundred years. Efforts are also hampered by the fact that many mosquitoes are becoming increasingly resistance to chloroquine, the drug used to treat and prevent the disease.
At the recent G8 Summit in Germany world leaders promised more money for combating malaria, but aid agencies point out much of this is already promised money that still isn't materialising into bed nets for children.
The spending makes sense to do this. UN economists have identified malaria as one of the top four causes of poverty, with African governments spending up to 40 per cent of their health budgets on care or control of the disease.
The answer is bed nets. Insecticide-treated bed nets work in three ways: by killing some of the malaria-carrying mosquitoes within a few minutes, repelling mosquitoes that are not killed, and acting as a mechanical barrier to biting.
Unicef is the world's largest buyer of bed nets, but many thousands more are needed.
For several years Unicef, the American Red Cross and the World Health Organisation have been leading an initiative to ensure that measles vaccinations reach hundreds of millions of impoverished children.
One dividend of the measles initiative's success is that its methods to get vaccines to remote rural villages can also serve to fight malaria.
The Measles Initiative began experimenting with the distribution of bed nets to each household with children who came for immunisation.
In trial programmes in Ghana and Zambia, they reached 70 per cent or more of households in remote rural areas in a matter of days.
In follow-up studies, the vast majority of the households retained the nets and a significant majority used them properly.
Even in utterly impoverished Niger and Togo, the campaigns were able to distribute bed nets on a national scale in just a few days.
The bed nets themselves are cheap and cost about US$15, which includes manufacturing, transportation and follow up by trained volunteers. Since the net lasts five years and typically two children sleep under it, protection is about US$1.50 per child per year.
The lack of will in making an impact on one of the oldest killers of young children is mind-boggling.
"It's a disease that could be controlled quite dramatically and easily if we just put in the effort. It's truly hard for me to understand why we aren't," Mr Sachs says.
* Georgina Newman is communications manager for Unicef NZ
On the web - www.unicef.org.nz
