Bangkok--Nov 7--eTurboNews
David Browne eTN London
The media's recent obsessive concern with the theoretical and remotely possible threat of a human pandemic arising from bird flu has diverted attention from much more practical and ever-present health threats that affect millions of people right now. Those threats are malaria and HIV/Aids.
Malaria kills 2,000 African children every day, and yet, according to a new study, spending on malaria research falls well short of the amount needed.
More than six million people are infected with the HIV virus in South Africa - the highest proportion of a population in the world.
Two of the world's top businessmen have stepped forward to raise the profile of the urgent task facing the developed world to help find a solution to the twin health problems that are decimating communities in poor countries.
The British airline entrepreneur, Sir Richard Branson, head of the Virgin empire, has been touring South Africa and has made a commitment to help fight the HIV/Aids epidemic that is sweeping the country. At the same time, the Microsoft boss, Bill Gates, has announced substantial grants from his charitable foundation to support the development of a malaria vaccine and other tools to save lives.
Branson - whose Virgin airlines interests include services in South Africa and Nigeria - was in Kyalami to promote Virgin Unite, an arm of the Virgin Group which aims to fight HIVAids, malaria and poverty, and met mining boss Cyril Ramaphosa in Braamfontein to launch a new project to encourage corporate South Africa to donate funds to combat HIV/Aids.
"No company should allow any employee to die of Aids," said Branson. "I took time off to make sure that I was acquainted with Aids and malaria. Now that I know the facts, no one working for Virgin is going to die of Aids.
"On the previous occasions I have come to South Africa I visited the death hospitals where people with HIV are taken to die. A simple cocktail of drugs can prevent this," he said.
Cyril Ramaphosa is the vice-president of the Global Business Coalition (GBC), an association of 170 companies committed to the fight against HIV/Aids. "Our government has moved quite a lot from the position that prevailed a few years ago," said Ramaphosa after his meeting with Branson. "We're seeing parents burying their children. We need to be doing much more. We need to get to grips with this pandemic, arrest it and reverse it."
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is pumping $258.3 million into research into anti-malaria medication, mosquito control methods and more effective insecticide treatments for bed nets in countries where mosquitoes are prevalent.
"Millions of children have died from malaria because they were not protected by an insecticide-treated bed net, or did not receive effective treatment. If we expand malaria control programs, and invest what's needed in R&D, we can stop this tragedy," said Bill Gates.
Efforts to develop better malaria control tools have gained new urgency as drug resistance has rendered the cheapest and most widely-used anti-malaria drugs useless in many parts of Africa. New combination treatments for malaria are very effective, but have remained out of reach for millions of Africans due to supply shortages and the relatively high cost of the drugs.
"Historically, controlling mosquitoes has been key to controlling malaria, but mosquitoes are developing resistance to insecticides," said Dr. Janet Hemingway, Director of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, one of the beneficiaries of the Gates Foundation grants. "We need new insecticides that are up to the task today, and that are safe for humans and the environment."
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