Development aid to improve health works, according to the World Health Organization's (WHO) report on malaria, released on Tuesday.

Funding for malaria has increased almost six fold during the past decade and 38 of the 98 malaria-prevalent countries have reduced their number of cases by 50 percent or more during that time.

Success with malaria is "mirrored by steep declines in all causes of death in children under 5 years of age," Robert Newman, WHO's Global Malaria Program Director, said at a press conference here.

Newman attributed the fall in child mortality rates to the development of public health systems as a result of malaria control efforts.

Alan Court, senior adviser to the UN Secretary General's Envoy for Malaria, estimated that by the end of 2009's third quarter, more than 56 percent of the malaria endemic population had access to insecticide-laced bed nets. In 2001, only 3 percent of children under five were using the nets.

Despite these gains, Newman warned that malaria control faced many threats, particularly that of unstable financing. "(Malaria) will resurge and it will do so with a vengeance," Newman said.

More than 60 percent of funding for all malaria interventions comes from The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Global Fund Director of Communications Jon Linden said that, for their 2010 fundraising campaign, "we will ask for more than anyone has ever asked for before." The exact number has yet to be released.

Richard Steketee, a Roll Back Malaria Partnership representative, said, "It's a cold day here in Geneva. Malaria is not on people's minds." But in the tropics, Steketee warned, the first rains had fallen and mosquitoes were breeding.

"As we go on our holidays, it's important to pay attention because disease doesn't take a holiday," Steketee said.

Half of the world's population is at risk of malaria, the majority in Africa. In 2008, an estimated 243 million cases of malaria were recorded and an estimated 863,000 people died of malaria.

(Xinhua News Agency December 16, 2009)