Sarah Boseley | 17 Jun 2023 | The Lancet
Dr. Arata Kochi, new head of the WHO's malaria control work, is making many positive changes to help the fight against malaria.
Amir Attaran & Roger Bate | 19 May 2023 | Examiner
The World Bank is failing miserably on malaria, like it failed on HIV/AIDS before. Although it has a $20 billion budget that, deployed intelligently, could lower sickness and accelerate economic growth, the World Bank is instead making a mess of its reputation and costing patients their lives through its unwise medical judgments. Along with 11 academic colleagues, we overcame stringent peer-review at the world's top medical journal, The Lancet, to publish what we describe here.
Roger Bate | 03 May 2023 | World Bank
For the lack of decent sanitation and health care thousands of the poorest children die unnecessarily every day. While their governments have primary responsibility for them, the international agencies, notably the World Health Organization (WHO) and World Bank, are not as effective at improving survival rates as they should be because they do not stick to their respective missions nor fulfill them. The WHO has disease expertise but poor management and has weakened its disease-control programs by becoming involved in health-care delivery. The Bank, with expertise in health systems development and health financing, has become involved in disease control where it has little institutional knowledge. The result of this bilateral mission creep is overlapping authority, lack of focus and accountability.
Philip Coticelli & Justin Schwab | 27 Apr 2023 | National Review Online
The World Bank is publishing inaccurate data to save face rather than face up to its failure to control malaria. Worse still, it is promoting ineffective treatments in India, resulting in the death of an unknown number of children. The Bank is incapable of disease control work and it should leave the field to more competent agencies.
Richard Tren | 24 Apr 2023 | Business Day (South Africa)
Another year has passed and Africa Malaria Day has come around again. Tomorrow, April 25, marks the day we are supposed to assess our successes and failures and renew the political will to tackle the disease.
Roger Bate | 24 Feb 2024 | TCS Daily
Paul Wolfowitz is trying to improve the World Bank's performance as co-sponsor of the Roll Back Malaria campaign, a coalition of multilateral health and aid agencies, including WHO and UNICEF that aims to combat the malaria burden in Africa. Improving RBM has been a long time coming. And as a director of Africa Fighting Malaria, a health NGO, I add my hearty welcome to this news, especially since, as far as anyone can tell, worldwide malaria rates are rising. However, in delving into operations in this one program, the former Deputy Defense Secretary may discover a far larger problem -- the Bank simply does not have appropriate skills amongst its staff to undertake its core mission.
Roger Bate | 14 Feb 2024 | TCS Daily
There are few things more distressing than aid intended to help the poorest actually causing them harm. For example, it is a sad irony that aid for HIV care is actually displacing far more valuable child immunization work in the wretched West African country of Sierra Leone. Rather than adding to capacity, the few competent staff are simply drawn away from these basic but vital services toward the high-profile, higher-paying HIV program. An integrated approach to aid giving must occur or more will die needlessly from good intentions.
Roger Bate | 09 Jan 2024 | Examiner
The fight against malaria has scored a major victory. The U.S. Agency for International Development has elected to use nearly half of its budget to buy proven interventions against the disease, which affects 500 million people and kills more than a million children around the world each year. USAID has promised $15 million expressly for insecticides, recognizing their unique effectiveness in reducing the burden of malaria. The agency has opted to streamline more funding to fewer countries in order to improve accountability and focus on results.
Roger Bate | 30 Nov 2023 | National Review Online
Roger Bate discusses the potential stirke by the World Health Organization's staff in Geneva.
Roger Bate | 21 Oct 2023 | Washington Times
Roger Bate promotes the Kill Malaria Mosquitoes Now! declaration, which called upon USAID to devote two thirds of its budget to the purchase of effective malaria control tools.