Malaria Summit 2018 kicks off

18th April 2018

Today is a landmark day in the fight against malaria – one of the world’s oldest and deadliest diseases. Leaders from 15 Commonwealth counties, along with The Prince of Wales and Bill Gates, will gather in London to re-focus and reignite global efforts to beat malaria for good.

While significant progress has been made in recent years, a child under five still dies from malaria every two minutes and in 2016, for the first time in years, the number of malaria cases in the world went up.

And so today, the global malaria community will urge Commonwealth leaders to make a game-changing commitment to halve malaria across the Commonwealth within the next five years. As a result, collective action could prevent 350 million cases of malaria, predominately children and pregnant women, saving 650,000 lives. The commitments will focus on three important areas to fight resurgence of the disease: increased funding and political leadership, accelerating innovation and better data-driven solutions.

Comic Relief is proud to be part of this historic moment and will continue working to help local communities in some of the most affected areas.