An open letter to the leaders of the eighteen East Asia Summit nations

Unique opportunity to eliminate malaria.

Regional agreement will protect 2 billion people in Asia Pacific

To the leaders of the eighteen East Asia Summit nations.

As you convene in Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar for your annual summit, we ask you to consider that until recently, malaria was one of the biggest killers in Asia and parts of the Pacific – and it could be again.

We are largely on track to achieve the 2007 World Health Assembly Goal of cutting malaria cases by 75% by the end of next year.

But we are also at risk of complacency.

Some countries and international organizations are cutting funds just when we need to go the final mile – to avoid the risk of malaria resurgence.

And resistance is becoming more widespread in the Greater Mekong Sub-region, threatening the usefulness of our most successful anti-malaria drug.

We ask you to recognize the risk and to provide the vision and commitment to action, to counter it effectively.

There is a growing consensus that malaria elimination is the only long-term strategy that will work. The Asia Pacific Leaders’ Malaria Alliance is proposing that the 2014 East Asia Summit in Novembercommit to eliminate the disease in Asia and the Pacific by 2030.

We commend the goal to you as a forward-looking commitment of historic significance.

We believe that it is achievable – and that we must achieve it to preserve our own health security - and that of our neighbors.

We ask for your leadership to deliver this vision.

licen

An open letter published in the Financial Time on 5 November 2014. View original source.