George Clooney’s malaria

It only takes ten days to be cured of malaria. The proof? American film star George Clooney who, according to his spokesperson, has already recovered from the disease he picked up in Sudan at the beginning of January. “It’s the second time he catches malaria. This proves that with the right medicines Africa’s most lethal disease can be cured in ten days,” said the spokesperson.

The 49 year old Ocean’s Eleven star and son of noted TV and print journalist Nick Clooney visited Sudan during the independence referendum held on January 9 -15 to try and bring the spotlight onto this country as it attempts to emerge from a 20 year civil war.

It is here, in Sudan, that Clooney caught malaria. In an interview broadcast on international TV he even managed to joke about it, saying that “perhaps the mosquitos that bit me were working for Al Bashir”, Sudan’s president.

The 781 thousand people who, according to the World Health Organisation’s latest figures, died of malaria in 2009 weren’t as lucky as him. The disease, which is caused by a parasite called Plasmodium, is transmitted by mosquitos and infects up to 10 per cent of the global population, killing one million people a year. Women and children are most at risk.

The battle against malaria has made huge progress, especially thanks to prevention campaigns and research. “In Eritrea, Rwanda, Zambia, Zanzibar and Saò Tomè and Principe the number of deaths from malaria has dropped by 50 per cent,” says Kristina Koning, spokesperson for the Stop Malaria Now campaign run by a consortium of ten organisations from Europe, Africa and the USA. Another recent piece of good news is that the initial tests for the first anti-malaria vaccine have been successful.

According to The Lancet, the results of the phase II study conducted on children in Kenya and Tanzania indicated a 46 per cent protection rate for 15 months, a figure scientists consider very postitive.

So what are the next steps in order to win the battle against malaria? “The greatest barriers are the lack of funds and the weakness of health systems in countries still affected by malaria,” explains Koning.

Even though the United Nations declared 2001 – 2010 as the decade for combatting malaria in developing countries, the commitment demonstrated would seem to prove otherwise. At the 2008 G8 summit, Kofi Annan allocated 8 billion dollars a year to fund a global fund against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. So far, the country’s richest countries have promised only 1.9 billion dollars.