World Malaria Day: Overcoming resistance through innovation

The global malaria response achieved remarkable success between 2000 and 2015. The introduction of artemisinin-based combination therapies, recommended by the World Health Organization since 2001, played a critical role in reducing malaria cases and saving the lives of millions of people – primarily young children and pregnant women. Combined with other interventions, such as insecticide-treated nets and indoor residual spraying, artemisinin combination therapies have contributed to averting over 2 billion malaria cases and nearly 13 million deaths since 2000.  

But progress has stalled in recent years. Insecticide- and drug-resistance now threaten some of the most successful malaria-fighting interventions currently available and the latest funding cuts to global health create new challenges in an already stagnating response.  

Resistance to artemisinin combination therapies – the recommended treatment against the malaria parasite – could render critical medicines ineffective if urgent action is not taken to bring down costs and diversify treatment supplies. 

Unitaid is working with partners to enhance case-management and support the introduction of multiple first-line therapies with the aim of slowing the spread of resistance, maintaining treatment effectiveness across different regions, and creating a more sustainable and resilient approach to malaria treatment.   

This builds on our work to address insecticide-resistance – a major threat to bedrock vector control interventions like mosquito nets and indoor residual sprays. One major initiative, the New Nets Project, employed a multipronged approach to new product introduction, simultaneously advancing market shaping interventions to increase supply and bring down costs while conducting the clinical research needed to underpin a WHO recommendation in record time. The New Nets Project, supported by additional interventions from the Global Fund and the President’s Malaria Initiative, cumulatively distributed 56 million mosquito nets between 2019 and 2022, averting an estimated 13 million deaths across sub-Saharan Africa.  

Meanwhile, we are working to complement and enhance the protection provided by mosquito nets with the introduction of new tools like spatial repellents. Spatial repellents are novel delivery mechanisms for insecticides that can be hung on the wall, where they and slowly release chemicals into the air to repel mosquitoes and prevent bites. We’re investing in the research needed to understand their impact against malaria and advance what could become the first new class of vector control tool to enter the malaria response in decades.  

But there is no time to spare. This World Malaria Day, we join partners across the world in urging renewed commitment and investment to accelerate the fight against malaria. This year’s global campaign — “Malaria Ends with Us: Reinvest, Reimagine, Reignite” — reminds us that ending malaria is still possible. But it will require stronger collaboration, sustained funding and innovations to meet the challenges ahead. If we don’t act together, and act now, to ensure lifesaving malaria tools reach those who need them most, we risk reversing decades of hard-won progress and putting millions of lives at risk.