Today, Wednesday, the Director of the World Infectious Disease Fund warned that malaria mortality may rise this year due to the decline in international aid.
The international aid sector has witnessed major turmoil since US President Donald Trump returns to power and freezes most of the United States’s international aid immediately.
Other countries have also reduced their budgets for development aid, but the discounts made by the United States, which is the largest traditional global donor, especially affected this sector.
“With regard to malaria, there has been a major impact on financing all the basic tools to combat the transmission of the disease,” said the director of the International Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria Peter Sands.
“There was a shortage of financing, but it was aggravated,” he said, stressing that malaria spreads quickly when conditions change.
Africa is the most affected continent than malaria, as the efforts to combat disease decreased in recent years due to climate change, the escalation of conflict, resistance to medicines, pesticides, and lack of financing.
Malaria is a disease that is transmitted to humans by bites of certain types of mosquitoes, and every year kills 600,000 people in Africa, most of whom are children under five years of age and pregnant women.
The numbers have not yet been available in 2025, but Sands expects to “increase the number of deaths among children due to malaria this year, partly due to the decline in funding.”
According to the official, an analysis conducted by the Roll Buck Malaria, a partner of the Global Fund for Malaria, indicates that more than 100,000 additional deaths will occur this year. He also expressed his fear of long -term effects on research.
The Global Fund, which renews its resources every 3 years, hopes to raise $ 18 billion by the end of November for the coming period.
This amount would “save up to 23 million people during the years 2027-2029”, according to the organization’s statement.