The WHO has malaria is to be one of WHO's top priorities and to that end
has initiated the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) initiative. Background on the
initiative is appended below.

Full text at http://www.who.int/rbm/about.html

WHO has also issued a RFP for a Web-enabled Information System for the
Roll Back Malaria Initiative (WIS-RBM). It is contained in a 84K MSWord
file at http://www.who.int/rbm under the WIS RBM link.

[Persons with views on this initiative and the RFP are invited to contact
me as I am working on some logistical aspects of the initiative. Email me
at my Bellanet email address:  <[log in to unmask]> ]

--- exerpt from ../rbm/about.html----

Upon taking office in July 1998, the World Health Organization's WHO) new
Director-General, Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, decided that malaria was to be
one of WHO's top priorities. It was evident that malaria was both a top
political priority among African leaders and that it was still a major
health scourge in many parts of the world, in Africa above all.

There are an estimated 300-500 million cases of malaria per year. The
majority of these occur in Africa, while the vast majority of the
estimated 1 million annual deaths from the disease occur among children,
and mainly among poor African children. Malaria is above all a disease of
the poor, impacting at least three times more greatly on the poor than any
other disease. Although malaria had been a priority of WHO since its
inception in 1948, malaria control efforts, Dr Brundtland found, had often
suffered from a lack of financial resources and uneven implementation. She
thus resolved, upon taking office, to find a means of focussing the
world's attention and support on renewed and redoubled efforts to beat
this scourge of the young and the poor: Roll Back Malaria.

RBM's objectives

Roll Back Malaria (RBM) is as an opportunity not only finally to beat a
devastating disease, but also to develop endemic countries' health systems
and build new means of tackling global health concerns. Thus, the goals of
RBM will include:

Support to endemic countries in developing their national health systems
as a major strategy for controlling malaria;  Efforts to develop the
broader health sector (i.e., all providers of health care to the community
the public sector health system, civil society and non-governmental
organisations, private health providers [including drug vendors and
traditional healers] and others);  Encouraging the needed human and
financial investments, national and international, for health system
development.

RBM's implementation at country level will provide an indicator of the
effectiveness of these health systems, while the programme will also serve
as a model for WHO in developing both other global health and development
initiatives and new methods of controlling infectious diseases.

RBM: a new approach to malaria control

WHO will establish a functioning partnership with a range of organizations
at global, regional and country levels, which results in development of a
sustained capacity to address malaria (and other priority health
problems). WHO's partners in RBM will include malaria endemic countries,
other UN organisations (on 30 October 1998, the United Nations Development
Programme, UNICEF, the World Bank and the World Health Organization
announced that the four agencies were launching RBM jointly and that they
would cooperate in all aspects of its activities, see press release
WHO/77), bilateral development agencies, development banks,
non-governmental organisations and the private sector.

WHO's role in the global partnership will be to:

Provide strategic direction and catalyse actions;  Provide an RBM
secretariat of approximately eight to 10 people at its Geneva
headquarters;  Work to build and sustain country and global partnerships;
Arrange the provision of technical endorsement, directly, or through
approved resource networks, for both a collective strategy and for
individual partners' actions;  Ensure that all aspects of progress of RBM
are monitored;  Provide global accountability for RBM;  Broker technical
assistance and finance on behalf of those who need it;  Undertake
responsible advocacy for the RBM approach to reducing malaria-related
suffering.
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  Sam Lanfranco                           email:[log in to unmask]
  Coordinator                              URL: http://www.dkglobal.org
  Distributed Knowledge Project      Tel: +416 816-2852 (cell/ans_mach)
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