Letter

Malaria in the uk: not such a bad thing?

Dear healthmatters — If malaria does return to the UK, as you suggest (Malaria may return as UK warms up, issue 43) there may be some benefit for those countries where malaria really is a major killer now. Today, nearly 500 million people suffer from acute malaria each year in poor countries, of whom 1 million will die from the disease, the majority of them children. Is there much money going into research on malaria prevention? Generally, 90 per cent of the world’s disease burden is the subject of less than 10 per cent of all international research on health. The last time that there was an upsurge in funding for malaria research was when the American troops were succumbing to it in Vietnam. So if we start to get malaria in the UK, something might be done about it.