President Granger reaffirms commitment to malaria fight at London Malaria Summit

President David Granger in his presentation at the Malaria Summit in London Wednesday proposed a four-pronged international approach to tackling the disease that kills millions annually.
Malaria remains one of the leading causes of death in Guyana in terms of communicable diseases; therefore, the President said the country was committed to halving the number of malaria cases and deaths by the year 2023.

From the 2015 baseline of 8329 cases, the Guyanese leader said significant national progress has been achieved in reducing the malaria cases.
“The total number of new cases declined by 60 per cent between 2010 and 2015. Malaria, unfortunately, despite these gains is highly resilient; a five per cent increase in new cases was recorded in 2016 and again in 2017,” the President told leaders.
The highest incidence of these cases, the Head of State informed the summit, was recorded in the forested areas of Guyana where mining is the principal economic activity.
The President then proposed the four-pronged international support strategy to combat the communicable disease be directed towards protecting citizens against its spread by the transfer of technologies from developed to developing and poor countries.
“It involves preventing and limiting vector-borne infections by the dissemination of quality health information; it involves providing improved tools for diagnosing and identifying active cases of malaria regardless of species and finally, by procuring high-quality combination malaria treatment to ensure full cure of infected persons and to avoid drug-resistant malaria,” he posited.
The November 2017 World Malaria Report showed that progress made to fight malaria had stalled, which posed the risk of all the work done so far becoming undone, or at worst, a resurgence.
As a result, the anti-malaria community united to put on the Malaria Summit in London, under the theme, “Ready to beat Malaria.”