Integration Bill Brieger | 17 Aug 2010 10:21 am
Malaria Integrated into Secretary Clinton’s Address
With the greater emphasis on maternal and child health evidenced in the U.S. Global Health Initiative, the Gates Foundation, the G8 Summit and DfID, one might question whether health development assistance is veering away from diseases like malaria. Secretary Hillary Clinton set that concern to rest today in her speech at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.
Below are some excerpts that refer to malaria in a variety of contexts and show the continued commitment of the US Government to malaria control and elimination:
- I’ve met … children in Angola who wake up every morning under bed nets and then head off to school eager to learn, unafflicted by malaria
- We help prevent and treat malaria for more than 50 million people every year
- We want to align our efforts with that of other donor countries and multilateral organizations, many of which do outstanding work to improve global health. Let me just mention one in particular: the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria
- Consider the life of a woman in one of our partner countries … Sometimes health services come right to her door, in the form of health volunteers bringing bed nets to protect her family from malaria
We are taking the investments our country has made in PEPFAR, the President’s Malaria Initiative, maternal and child health, family planning, neglected tropical diseases, and other critical health areas – building on the work of agencies across the federal government, such as the Centers for Disease Control – and expanding their reach by improving the overall environment in which health services are delivered
This last quote shows clearly that the US Government aid effort sees malaria as part of the broader health development picture. We encourage all partners not to lose sight of the need to reduce child and maternal morbidity and mortality by integrating malaria control into all MCH efforts.