Seattle malaria community commemorates day at PATH

Seattle’s malaria community gathered at PATH headquarters on Monday, April 25, to commemorate the fourth annual World Malaria Day. The theme of this year’s commemoration was “Achieving Progress and Impact”—a particularly notable theme as malaria-endemic countries continue to strive to reach the goal of zero deaths from malaria by the year 2015.

The event began with a community marketplace that featured the work of local malaria organizations including Episcopal Relief and Development, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Rotary, Seattle BioMed, the Worldwide Antimalarial Resistance Network, and PATH. Participating PATH teams included MACEPA, the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, and our diagnostics technologies staff. Experts shared recent research and progress with their peers. The marketplace was followed by a series of presentations that covered malaria control progress to date and some of the challenges in measuring impact.

Videos and PowerPoint presentations from each speaker can be downloaded below:

• Achieving progress and impact (702 KB PDF)
  David Brandling-Bennett, deputy director and strategic program lead, malaria, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Monitoring malaria control and its impact in sub-Saharan Africa (1.6 MB PDF)
  Stephen Lim, associate professor, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation
• Malaria control: the celebrations and hard realities to come (1.9 MB PDF)
  Chris Elias, president and CEO, PATH

Stopping children from dying from malaria

In his closing remarks, David Brandling-Bennett, deputy director and strategic program lead of malaria at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, emphasized that the malaria community is making progress and “seeing tremendous impact at a low cost” with expanded coverage of lifesaving malaria-control interventions, contributing to an overall 20 percent decline in child mortality. Kent Campbell, leader of PATH's Malaria Control Program, spoke highly of the wealth of malaria expertise and global leadership present in the Seattle area, saying: “There is an incredible wealth of knowledge and expertise in Seattle, and together we are making a powerful impact on this disease. We can take pride in the work we are doing, but we must also feel a sense of urgency. The opportunity that lies before us is an enormous one: to end illnesses and deaths caused by malaria.”

Photos: PATH/Laura Newman.