Ed Note. PSI Deputy Director for Malaria Control Angus Spiers offers his take on the ongoing dispute in the malaria community over new mortality estimates that contravene previous estimate by the World Health Organization. 

As the New York Times reports (and as we noted in the Healthy Dose today)  the new malaria study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) has created a lot of debate in the malaria community, not least because of the much higher estimates of mortality, especially in those of 5 years of age, than World Health Organization estimates. No matter which set of statistics you use, the unacceptable underlying fact remains that hundreds of thousands of people (mostly children) will die from an entirely preventable and treatable disease.

Many of the gains in malaria control that have led to the downturn in deaths reported by WHO and the IHME study are the result of the scale up of long lasting insecticide treated bed nets in Africa. That progress is under threat unless the global community, at least, maintains funding levels for malaria control. Those nets are wearing out, and need replacing. Access to effective diagnosis and treatment for malaria is still unacceptably low, so there is still much to do if the progress reported by both the WHO and the IHME is to be maintained. Currently, global malaria funding is falling, not least because of the postponement of Global Fund Round 11 and these gains will be rapidly lost if the nets are not replaced and accurate case management of fevers is not scaled up.