‘It’s doable,’ says health expert

Duncan Wilson




One of the world’s leading experts on malaria and public health says a new Asia-Pacific Malaria Elimination Network should ensure the Pacific is malaria-free by 2020.
Network chairman and University of California’s Professor Sir Richard Feachman launched the group in Australia.
It comprises country agencies and experts from key multilateral and academic institutions.
The Solomon Islands and Vanuatu are two of 10 member countries that will benefit from scientific collaboration on the particular challenges of the region’s parasite, as well as greater coordination and resourcing of conventional malaria responses.
Study of the Asia-Pacific parasite plasmodium vivax has historically been neglected because it is not found in Africa, where majority of the disease’s one million annual deaths occur.
“There are shared technical challenges the group will address and most important of all is plasmodium vivax,” Feachem said.
“It has been neglected as a parasite in terms of research so the countries are coming together to work vigorously and collaboratively to better understand how to diagnose and treat vivax malaria.”
The network’s response will also include widespread provision of insecticide-treated bed nets and insecticide sprays of Pacific Islands homes.
Feachem said technical cooperation would be the key. The network would work with RAMSI and Australian and Pacific governments to map malaria cases “household by household, village by village.”
The Solomon Islands and Vanuatu have national malaria elimination strategies. The countries have nominated Tafea (Vanuatu) and Temotu (Solomons) as provinces for the group’s initial target.
“By 2020 malaria elimination in the Pacific is doable because our pace will accelerate,” Feachem said.
“As you eradicate malaria from one province, that also means that less malaria is being moved around from one island to another, it doesn’t travel so much and is easier to target.”
The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation are key sponsors of the project, although Feachem also credits Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s “enormous passion and drive” for the project.
The business community in the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu has also provided significant assistance.
Professor Feachem has a very personal interest in the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu malaria elimination programmes, having worked in Melanesia for several years at the outset of his career.
In 1965, aged 18, he worked as a volunteer for a year in the southwest of Gualdalcanal, Solomon Islands.
His task was to build an airstrip, which remains a lifeline to the country 45 years later.
In 1970 as a medical graduate, Feachem lived in the highlands of Papua New Guinea in Enga province near the town of Wabag.
He describes this as a formative time of his career, which led to a life-long focus on public health.
“I have a strong personal and emotional attachment to this part of the world. I try and return as often as I can, for work and for the people, and it was wonderful to be back this year,” Feachem said.
Feachem’s career has included work as the director of health, nutrition and population at the World Bank; founding director of the institute for global health at two United States universities, and founding director of the global fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, as well as Under Secretary General of the United Nations.