Gates gives $168m for fight against malaria
Although it had cured her in years past, this time it didn't. She was rushed to the hospital, and hooked up to an intravenous drip.
"I have no inner strength. I feel like I'm dying," the 30-year-old university student said from her hospital bed.
Malaria, the ancient mosquito-borne disease that was rolled back by medical advances in the mid-20th century, is making a deadly comeback. Strains of the disease are becoming increasingly resistant to treatment, infecting and killing more people than ever before, sickening as many as 900 million last year, according to estimates by the US Agency for International Development.
More than 1 million people as many as 2.7 million by some estimates of those victims died. The vast majority of the deaths were in Africa.
After three days in a private hospital in Nigeria's commercial capital, Lagos, Egbuchue recovered from what doctors said was a strain that had become resistant to many standard treatments.
Only AIDS kills more people worldwide. Among children, malaria kills even more than AIDS.
The economic cost of malaria is also high. In countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America where the disease is endemic, the World Health Organisation estimates up to $12 billion are lost annually to the disease.
International efforts to contain or even eradicate the disease have received a boost in recent years with major grants from the US government and from the $4.7 billion five-year UN Global Fund for Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation yesterday announced $168m in funding for malaria research, the largest single donation to fighting the disease. The announcement was made as Gates and his wife, Melinda, toured a malaria treatment and research centre in Mozambique.
"Malaria is robbing Africa of its people and potential," said Gates. "Beyond the extraordinary human toll, Malaria is one of the greatest barriers to Africa's economic growth, draining national health budgets and deepening poverty."
