Consolidating Gains and Accelerating Efforts to Control and Eliminate Malaria in Developing Countries, Particularly in Africa, by 2015 and Beyond

A/RES/69/325View PDF

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 12 2001-2010: Decade to Roll Back Malaria in Developing Countries, Particularly in Africa, published in 2015.

What subjects does this mandate have?

18 subjects

Africa Developing Countries Disease Control Disease Prevention Health Personnel Intellectual Property International Days Malaria Partnership Pesticides Pharmaceuticals Programme Implementation Research Resources Mobilization Tariffs Technical Cooperation Vaccines Vector-Borne Diseases

What’s in this document?

42 operative paragraphs

Welcomes the report prepared by the World Health Organization,⁸ and calls for support for the implementation of the recommendations contained therein;

⁸A/68/854.

Calls for increased support for the implementation of international commitments and goals pertaining to the fight to eliminate malaria as stipulated in the internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals and the sustainable development goals, as well as the related targets outlined in the Global Technical Strategy for Malaria 2016–2030 of the World Health Organization and the Action and Investment to Defeat Malaria 2016–2030 plan of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership;

Encourages Member States, relevant organizations of the United Nations system, international institutions, non-governmental organizations, the private sector and civil society to continue to observe World Malaria Day on 25 April, in order to raise public awareness of and knowledge about the prevention, control and treatment of malaria as well as the importance of meeting the sustainable development goals, and stresses the importance of engaging local communities in this regard;

Encourages the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Malaria to continue raising issues relating to malaria in collaboration with other United Nations organizations already working on those issues in the context of the international political and development agendas and to work with national and global leaders to intensify efforts to secure the political commitment , partnerships and funds to drastically reduce malaria deaths by at least 90 per cent by 2030 through increased access to prevention, diagnosis and treatment, especially in Africa;

Welcomes the increased funding, while recognizing the need for additional funding to achieve malaria elimination targets, for malaria interventions and for research and development of preventive, diagnostic and control tools from the international community, through funding from multilateral and bilateral sources and from the private sector, as well as by making predictable financing available through appropriate and effective aid modalities and in-country health financing mechanisms aligned with national priorities, which are key to strengthening health systems, including malaria surveillance, and promoting universal and equitable access to high-quality malaria prevention, diagnostic and treatment services, and noting in this regard that a high level of external assistance per person at risk for malaria is associated with a decrease in the incidence of the disease;

Urges the international community, United Nations agencies and private organizations and foundations to support the implementation of the Global Technical Strategy for Malaria 2016–2030, including through support for the complementary Action and Investment to Defeat Malaria 2016–2030 plan and for programmes and activities at the country level in order to achieve internationally agreed targets on malaria;

Calls upon the international community to continue to support the Roll Back Malaria Partnership and partner organizations, including the World Health Organization, the World Bank and the United Nations Children’s Fund, as vital complementary sources of support for the efforts of malaria-endemic countries to combat the disease;

Urges the international community to work in a spirit of cooperation towards effective, increased, harmonized, predictable and sustained bilateral and multilateral assistance and research to combat malaria, including support for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, in order to assist States, in particular malaria-endemic countries, to implement sound national plans, in particular health plans and sanitation plans, including malaria control and elimination strategies which may include evidence-based, cost-effective and context-appropriate environmental management solutions, and integrated management of childhood illnesses, in a sustained and equitable way that, inter alia, contributes to strengthening health system development approaches at the district level;

Appeals to the malaria partners to resolve the financial, supply chain and delivery bottlenecks that are responsible for stock-outs of long-lasting insecticide-treated nets, insecticides for indoor and outdoor residual spraying, rapid diagnostic tests and artemisinin-based combination therapies at the national level, whenever they occur, including through the strengthening of malaria programme management at the country level;

Welcomes the contribution to the mobilization of additional and predictable resources for development by voluntary innovative financing initiatives taken by groups of Member States, and in this regard notes the International Drug Purchase Facility, UNITAID, the International Finance Facility for Immunization, the advance market commitments for vaccines, the Gavi Alliance and the Affordable Medicines Facility for Malaria pilot, and expresses support for the work of the Leading Group on Innovative Financing for Development and its special task force on innovative financing for health;

Urges malaria-endemic countries to work towards financial sustainability, to increase, to the extent possible, national resources allocated to malaria control and to create favourable conditions for working with the private sector in order to improve access to good-quality malaria services;

Urges Member States to assess and respond to the needs for integrated human resources at all levels of the health system in order to achieve the internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals and the sustainable development goals, to take action, as appropriate, to effectively govern the recruitment, training and retention of skilled health personnel, and to give particular focus to the availability of skilled personnel at all levels to meet technical and operational needs as increased funding for malaria control programmes becomes available;

Stresses the importance of improved community-based systems to control malaria, bearing in mind that families are often the starting point for effective health care for a child with a fever and that improved home management of malaria will therefore have a positive impact on treatment and control;

Calls upon Member States to promote access to medicines, and emphasizes that access to affordable and quality medicines and medical care in the event of sickness, as well as in the prevention, treatment and control of diseases, is central to the realization of the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health;

Urges the international community, inter alia, to support the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to enable it to meet its financial needs and, through country-led initiatives with adequate international support, to intensify access to affordable, safe and effective antimalarial treatments, including artemisinin-based combination therapies, intermittent preventive therapies for pregnant women, children under 5 and infants, adequate diagnostic facilities, long-lasting insecticide-treated mosquito nets, including, where appropriate through the free distribution of such nets and, where appropriate, to insecticides for indoor residual spraying for malaria control, taking into account relevant international rules, including the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants⁹ standards and guidelines;

⁹United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 2256, No. 40214.

Urges relevant international organizations, in particular the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund, to enhance the assistance efforts of national Governments to provide universal access to malaria control interventions to address all at-risk populations, in particular young children and pregnant women, in malaria-endemic countries, particularly in Africa, as rapidly as possible, with due regard to ensuring the proper use of those interventions, including long-lasting insecticide-treated nets, and sustainability through full community participation and implementation through the health system;

Calls upon Member States, in particular malaria-endemic countries, with the support of the international community, to establish and/or strengthen national policies, operational plans and research, with a view to scaling up efforts to achieve internationally agreed malaria targets, in accordance with the technical recommendations of the World Health Organization;

Commends those African countries that have implemented the recommendations of the Abuja Summit in 2000 to reduce or waive taxes and tariffs for nets and other products needed for malaria control,Error: Reference source not found and encourages other countries to do the same;

Calls upon United Nations agencies and their partners to continue to provide the technical support necessary to build and enhance the capacity of Member States to implement the Global Technical Strategy for Malaria 2016–2030, together with the Action and Investment to Defeat Malaria 2016–2030 plan, to meet the internationally agreed goals;

Expresses deep concern about emerging drug and insecticide resistance in several regions of the world, calls upon Member States, with support from the World Health Organization and other partners, to implement the Global Plan for Artemisinin Resistance Containment and the Global Plan for Insecticide Resistance Management in Malaria Vectors and to strengthen and implement surveillance systems for monitoring and assessing changing patterns of drug and insecticide resistance, calls upon the World Health Organization to support Member States in the development of their national insecticide resistance management strategies and to coordinate support at the international level for countries to ensure that drug efficacy and insecticide resistance testing is fully operational in order to enhance the use of artemisinin-based combination therapies and insecticides, and stresses that the data gathered should be utilized to inform local decisions and for further research and development of safe and effective therapies and new vector control tools;

Urges all Member States to prohibit the marketing and use of oral artemisinin-based monotherapies and to replace them with oral artemisinin-based combination therapies, as recommended by the World Health Organization, and to develop the financial, legislative and regulatory mechanisms necessary to introduce artemisinin combination therapies at affordable prices in both public and private facilities;

Recognizes the importance of the development of safe, affordable and cost-effective vaccines and new medicines to prevent and treat malaria and the need for further and accelerated research, including into safe, effective and high-quality therapies, using rigorous standards, including by providing support to the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases,¹⁰ through effective global partnerships, such as the various malaria vaccine initiatives and the Medicines for Malaria Venture, where necessary stimulated by new incentives to secure their development, and through effective and timely support for the pre-qualification of new antimalarials and their combinations;

¹⁰A joint programme of the United Nations Children’s Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank and the World Health Organization.

Recognizes the importance of innovation in addressing the challenges to eliminating malaria, including the role of the World Intellectual Property Organization, in particular its Re:Search platform;

Calls upon the international community, including through existing partnerships, to increase investment in and efforts towards research to optimize current tools, develop and validate new, safe and affordable malaria-related medicines, products and technologies, such as vaccines, rapid diagnostic tests, insecticides and their delivery modes, to prevent and treat malaria, especially for at-risk children and pregnant women, and test opportunities for integration in order to enhance effectiveness and delay the onset of resistance;

Calls upon malaria-endemic countries to assure favourable conditions for research institutions, including the allocation of adequate resources and the development of national policies and legal frameworks, where appropriate, with a view to, inter alia, informing policy formulation and strategic interventions on malaria;

Reaffirms the right to use, to the fullest extent, the provisions contained in the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement), the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, the decision of the General Council of the World Trade Organization of 30 August 2003 on the implementation of paragraph 6 of the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, and, when formal acceptance procedures are completed, the amendment to article 31 of the Agreement, which provide flexibilities for the protection of public health, and in particular to promote access to medicines for all and to encourage the provision of assistance to developing countries in this regard, and calls for the broad and timely acceptance of the amendment to article 31 of the Agreement, as proposed by the General Council of the World Trade Organization in its decision of 6 December 2005;

Recognizes the importance in the struggle against malaria of the World Health Organization Global Strategy and Plan of Action on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property, adopted by the World Health Assembly on 24 May 2008;Error: Reference source not found

Calls upon malaria-endemic countries, development partners and the international community to support the timely replacement of long-lasting insecticide-treated nets in accordance with the recommendations of the World Health Organization on the service lives of the nets, in order to prevent the risk of malaria resurgence and a reversal of the gains made to date;

Calls upon the international community to support ways to expand access to affordable, effective and safe products and treatments, such as vector control measures, including indoor residual spraying, long-lasting insecticide-treated nets, including through the free distribution of such nets, adequate diagnostic facilities, intermittent preventive therapies for pregnant women, children under 5 and infants, and artemisinin-based combination therapy for populations at risk of falciparum malaria infection in endemic countries, particularly in Africa, including through additional funds and innovative mechanisms, inter alia, for the financing and scaling up of artemisinin production and procurement, as appropriate, to meet the increased need;

Recognizes the impact of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, and welcomes the increased level of public-private partnerships for malaria control and prevention, including the financial and in-kind contributions of private sector partners and companies operating in Africa, as well as the increased engagement of non-governmental service providers;

Encourages the producers of long-lasting insecticide-treated nets and insecticides to accelerate technology transfer to developing countries, and invites the World Bank and regional development funds to consider supporting malaria-endemic countries in establishing factories to scale up production of long-lasting insecticide-treated nets and insecticides, where appropriate;

Calls upon Member States and the international community, especially malaria-endemic countries, in accordance with existing guidelines and recommendations of the World Health Organization and the requirements of the Stockholm Convention related to the use of DDT, to become fully knowledgeable about the technical policies and strategies of the World Health Organization and the provisions of the Stockholm Convention, including for indoor residual spraying, long-lasting insecticide-treated nets and case management, intermittent preventive therapies for pregnant women, children under 5 and infants, monitoring of in vivo resistance studies to artemisinin-based combination therapies and monitoring and managing insecticide resistance and outdoor malaria transmission, as well as to increase capacity for the registration and uptake of new vector control tools, the safe, effective and judicious use of indoor residual spraying and other forms of vector control, including quality control measures, in accordance with international rules, standards and guidelines;

Requests the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund and donor agencies to provide support to those countries that choose to use DDT for indoor residual spraying so as to ensure that it is implemented in accordance with international rules, standards and guidelines, and to provide all possible support to malaria-endemic countries to manage the intervention effectively and prevent the contamination, in particular, of agricultural products with DDT and other insecticides used for indoor residual spraying;

Encourages the World Health Organization and its member States, with the support of the parties to the Stockholm Convention, to continue to explore possible alternatives to DDT as a vector control agent;

Recognizes the importance of a multisectoral strategy to advance global control efforts, invites malaria-endemic countries to consider adopting and implementing the Multisectoral Action Framework for Malaria, developed by the Roll Back Malaria Partnership and the United Nations Development Programme, and encourages regional and intersectoral collaboration, both public and private, at all levels, especially in education, health, agriculture, economic development and the environment, to advance malaria control objectives;

Also recognizes the need to strengthen malaria surveillance and data quality in all endemic regions, a key pillar of the Global Technical Strategy for Malaria 2016–2030, to enable Member States to direct financial resources to populations most in need and to respond effectively to disease outbreaks;

Calls upon Member States and the international community to strengthen mechanisms for country-based coordination of technical assistance to achieve alignment of the best approaches to implement World Health Organization technical guidance and to mobilize support for the sharing and analysis of best practices to address urgent programmatic challenges, to improve monitoring and evaluation and to conduct regular financial planning and gap analysis;

Encourages sharing, across regions, of knowledge, experience and lessons learned with regard to the control and elimination of malaria, particularly between the Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America regions;

Calls upon the international community to support the strengthening of health systems, national pesticide and/or pharmaceutical policies and national drug and pesticide regulatory authorities, to monitor and fight against the trade in counterfeit and substandard antimalarial medicines, pesticides and/or nets, and prevent their distribution and use, and to support coordinated efforts, inter alia, by providing technical assistance for compliance with existing commitments and international regulations on the use of pesticides and to improve surveillance, monitoring and evaluation systems and their alignment with national plans and systems so as to better track and report changes in coverage, the need for scaling up recommended interventions and the subsequent reductions in the burden of malaria;

Encourages Member States, the international community and all relevant actors, including the private sector, to promote the coordinated implementation and enhance the quality of malaria-related activities, in accordance with national policies and operational plans that are consistent with the technical recommendations of the World Health Organization and recent efforts and initiatives, including, where appropriate, the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, the Accra Agenda for Action, adopted at the Third High-level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, held in Accra from 2 to 4 September 2008,¹¹ the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation and the Nairobi outcome document of the High-level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation;¹²

¹¹A/63/539, annex.

¹²Resolution 64/222, annex.

Recognizes the need for political commitment and financial support beyond 2015 to sustain and expand the achievements in the struggle against malaria and to meet the international malaria targets through prevention and malaria control efforts to end the epidemic, while acknowledging the remarkable progress in combating malaria to date;

Requests the Secretary-General, in close collaboration with the Director General of the World Health Organization and in consultation with Member States, to report to the General Assembly at its seventieth session on the implementation of the present resolution.

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

What subjects does this mandate have?

What’s in this document?

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