Introduction
Despite remarkable progress in recent years, malaria remains a leading cause of sickness and death across much of sub-Saharan Africa. Malaria disproportionately impacts the rural poor, typically people who must walk for miles to seek treatment. It is also a leading cause of absenteeism among employees, increased health care spending, decreased productivity, and approximately 50 percent of all preventable school absences in Africa. Malaria helps to trap families in a vicious cycle of disease and poverty.
Between 2000 and 2015, a concerted global effort has helped reduce malaria deaths by more than 60 percent, saved almost 7 million lives, and prevented more than 1 billion malaria cases. The U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative, led by USAID, and implemented together with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has been a key partner in this effort. Together with partner countries, PMI is working to optimize the use and scale-up of effective tools for the prevention and control of malaria. Simultaneously, and of equal importance, PMI is building the skills of multiple teams of health workers to deliver malaria services effectively, while empowering ministry of health leaders to manage malaria control activities with increasing self-reliance. With the support of PMI and other partners, national malaria control programs in Africa are leading their own response to achieve results in a sustainable and accountable manner.
The global malaria community has embraced a longterm vision of a world without malaria which PMI’s Strategy for 2015–2020 supports (see Box). Since the launch of PMI by President George W. Bush in 2006, the U.S. Government has shown unwavering commitment to ending malaria. Increases in appropriations from Congress enabled PMI to add new countries beyond the original 15 envisioned at the time of PMI’s launch (see Figure 1). In FY 2017, thanks to increased funding for PMI from the U.S. Congress, PMI announced plans for a five-country expansion adding programs in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Niger, and Sierra Leone, which grew PMI’s reach to 24 malaria-endemic countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including those with the highest burden, and three programs in the Greater Mekong Subregion of Southeast Asia.