SWITZERLAND — Climate change is increasing malaria infections, said Peter Sands, the executive director of the world’s biggest health fund in Davos.
Huge surges in malaria infections followed recent floods in Pakistan and cyclones in Mozambique in 2021, said Peter Sands, the executive director of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.
Floods in Pakistan, cyclones in Mozambique, and other climate change-influenced events have driven malaria infections up, reports say, as well as changing where mosquitoes flourish.
“Whenever you have an extreme weather event it’s fairly common to have a surge of malaria,” he said at the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos.
The rise in extreme weather events, as well as the resulting large pools of standing water that attract mosquitoes, puts poorer populations at risk.
He claimed that climate change was altering mosquito distribution. Because of a shift in the low temperatures that once made the area unsustainable for mosquitoes, the African highlands of Kenya and Ethiopia are now succumbing to malaria.
The fund, which was established in 2002, is a multilateral organization that collects money from governments and private donors (primarily the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) and distributes it to local groups working on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.
The fund plans on the basis of “replenishments,” every three years, during which donors negotiate pledges for funding the following three years of efforts.
The US agreed to host the Replenishment conference last year in Washington from September 19 to 21, a major signal of US support for the global development community.
The fund, which aimed to raise US$18 billion, has so far raised US$15.7 billion, the most money ever raised in global health.
Part of the shortfall, he said, was a billion-dollar hit from currency fluctuations that affected donations.
Climate change is just one of the factors that could stymie efforts to eradicate the diseases, according to Sands.
The Ukrainian conflict has exacerbated AIDS and tuberculosis. Tuberculosis cases among the poorest populations are increasing in middle-income countries such as India, Pakistan, and Indonesia.
Sands predicted that as fears of a global recession grew, those countries would face increased pressure.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria allocated over US$ 281 million for Pakistan in December to combat the diseases for the next three year.
A decision was adopted earlier in November to make the allocation for 2023-2025 for building resilient and sustainable health systems in Pakistan.
Sands expressed that Global Fund’s biggest concern is what happens to health budgets in the 120 or so countries it is investing in since those countries’ spending patterns are often opaque.
This opaqueness often makes it hard to estimate how much a given intervention costs, and how much in the way of public health improvements a given dollar spent on that intervention can produce.
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