April 25 is World Malaria Day, and this year the World Health Organization (WHO) is shining a spotlight on prevention, the cornerstone of malaria control efforts globally. While many countries with ongoing malaria transmission have reduced the burden of this disease significantly, the work is far from over. According to the WHO, in 2015 alone, there were an estimated 212 million new cases of malaria. That same year, malaria claimed the lives of almost half a million people worldwide, mainly young African children.

Douglas Keene, MSH Vice President of the Pharmaceuticals and Health Technologies, participated on a high-level panel of dignitaries and experts at an international symposium to deliberate the key dimensions of sustainability for seasonal malaria chemoprevention.

In Mali, major weaknesses in the pharmaceutical sector include lack of availability of regular, reliable pharmaceutical management information for decision-making and an inadequate and fragmented logistics system that fails to take the community level into account when planning for inventory management. As a result, stock-outs of lifesaving commodities are frequent at all health service delivery points.

The explosion of the Zika virus in South America, Central America and the Caribbean has provided more vivid evidence of the urgency to invest in pandemic prevention and preparedness. The virus is spread by the day-biting Aedes aegypti mosquito that also carries dengue and chikungunya viruses. Although it was first identified in 1947, until the 2000s it had been confined to Africa.