Yesterday, Roll Back Malaria Partnership announced new findings that show the world is winning the fight against malaria. A release on the website says:

According to Roll Back Malaria Partnership: A Decade of Partnership and Results, global malaria deaths have dropped by an estimated 38%, with 43 countries (11 of them in Africa) cutting malaria cases or deaths by 50% or more, reversing the trend of the previous decade and saving over a million lives.

"Only rarely have we seen a public health initiative provide so much return on investment. Thanks to the efforts of the Roll Back Malaria Partners over the past decade, we have a foundation that allows affected countries and communities to reach even greater results in the years to come", said the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

With approximately US$ 5 billion mobilized over this period, coverage has risen across all interventions to prevent and treat malaria, particularly insecticide-treated nets. Enough nets have been distributed to cover nearly 80% of the population at risk in sub-Saharan Africa. According to Dr. Robert Newman, Director of WHO's Global Malaria Program, the report's findings are cause for real optimism. "The results of the past decade exceed what anyone could have predicted and prove that malaria control is working. Many of these achievements have occurred in the last five years, which tells us that we are becoming increasingly effective in our ability to tackle this disease."

In the past decade, an additional three countries have eliminated malaria and another 26 are in various stages of the elimination process. It is expected that all of the countries in the World Health Organization's (WHO) European Region will have eliminated malaria by 2015.

Read the rest of the release on the RBM site. For the full report, click here.