Health and Social Needs
Malaria: Effective prevention is the best protection
More than 500 million people contract malaria each year, 90 percent of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa. Up to three million people a year die of the disease, including a large number of children. In several African countries, such as Ethiopia, Uganda, Zambia and Malawi, Bayer for many years has participated actively in the fight against malaria, which is transmitted by the Anopheles mosquito.
 |
Anopheles mosquito
|
Since September 2007, Bayer CropScience has been an official collaboration partner of the Innovative Vector Control Consortium (IVCC). The IVCC is a consortium of leading institutions active in the development of vector-control products and information systems. It was formed with a grant of US$ 50.7 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Bayer CropScience will initially collaborate on two research projects. The first project, in partnership with the Medical Research Council in South Africa, the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), is aimed at finding new approaches to indoor residual spraying which will provide longer-lasting and improved protection against the vectors that transmit malaria and other diseases. The second project, in cooperation with the LSTM and the University of Liverpool, is seeking to modify existing active ingredients in order to solve the resistance problem.
The strategic partnership brings together the IVCC’s extensive know-how and Bayer’s expertise in products for effective vector control in the fight against malaria.
