Furthermore, according to the WHO’s Commission on Macroeconomics and Health (CMH), the world spends only $600 million a year on malaria control and treatment, in stark contrast to forecasts from UNAIDS that, by 2007, it will spend $15 billion a year on AIDS treatments. The irony is that, unlike AIDS, malaria can be cured. Yet African countries that have focused their health spending on curable diseases including malaria have been criticized for not taking the AIDS epidemic seriously. WHO, the World Bank, and the United Nations agencies UNICEF and UNDP set up the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) program, but WHO’s report claims the program has achieved very little so far.

RBM wants to find additional resources to fight malaria, support research against it, and promote cost-effective interventions that reach those who need them the most,. Its goal is to shrink the world’s malaria burden in half by 2010. The total estimated annual cost of treating the disease is more than $12 billion, yet the estimate for insecticide-treated bed nets and more modern medicines is a mere $2 billion a year, according to CMH.

 In the meantime, resistance to existing antimalarials is rising, so the need for new drugs is urgent. Given that malaria-infested areas lack the money to buy medicines, few pharma companies have been willing to invest in the development of new antimalarials. Nevertheless, through a public–private partnership called the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), the industry has found a way to tackle the shortage of new malaria drugs.

With an annual budget of $30 million a year, MMV has its first new drug, fucidomycin, in clinical trials. The molecule is a result of one of the many scientific breakthroughs in understanding infectious diseases that have been made in recent years—in this case the recently published genome sequencing of Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes the most severe form of malaria and is the most common malaria parasite in Africa.

Despite the commercial drawbacks, some pharma companies have also set up programs. GlaxoSmithKline’s African Malaria Partnership targets malaria control by funding behavioral development projects that will reduce the likelihood or frequency of infection and improve the condition’s management.

As with AIDS, the ultimate solution to the malaria problem is likely to come in a vaccine, and more than a dozen are in development. But until one reaches the market, the best hope is that the anti-AIDS campaign can spare enough funds to supply bed nets and antimalarial drugs. Even a fraction of the AIDS spend would make a real difference.