Experts Meet to Discuss the Elimination of Malaria

According to the World Malaria Report 2014, published by the World Health Organisation (WHO), progress continues to be made in the struggle against this disease. Between 2000 and 2013, the incidence of malaria decreased by 30% worldwide and the mortality rate fell by 47%. Building on these important advances, the WHO's new global malaria strategy for the next 15 years shifts the focus to malaria elimination, an area in which there is still much work to be done: in 2013, 198 million people were infected worldwide and 584,000 died.

Against this backdrop, officials from malaria programmes and health ministries across the globe and leading malaria researchers from international organisations and universities gathered for the fourth edition of Science of Eradication: Malaria. The aim of the course was to discuss the paradigm shift involved in moving away from a control strategy focused on reducing mortality and morbidity and towards an elimination strategy focused on reducing infections to zero in order to definitively interrupt transmission—a task requiring the use of specifically designed tools.

Science of Eradication: Malaria was held at Harvard Business School in Boston from 14 to 22 June 2015. The course is organised jointly by three institutions with a wealth of knowledge and expertise in malaria: ISGlobal, Harvard University and the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute. Participants acquire the knowledge and skills they need to develop malaria elimination programmes and also contribute to the generation of the knowledge needed to eliminate the disease from their countries. The next edition of the course will be held in Barcelona, Spain, from 12 to 20 June 2016.