Malaria has killed more people than all wars, throughout human history, combined. It still kills over 250,000 children under five each year in Africa alone.
The good news is that we know the things that work against malaria, and with your support we can help provide them. Educating communities, training health workers, access to mosquito nets, testing kits and anti-malarial drugs; these are all relatively cheap and effective ways to save lives. So much so, that since 2000, child malaria death rates in Africa have dropped by 71%.
Malaria is a disease, caused by the Plasmodium parasite, which is passed from person to person by the female Anopheles mosquito. Symptoms include fever, headaches, muscle pains and vomiting. If not diagnosed and treated quickly, it can cause anaemia, permanent learning disabilities and death.
In 2015, Comic Relief and GSK announced a five-year, £22 million partnership to fund organisations fighting malaria in four malaria-endemic countries in sub-Saharan Africa and the greater Mekong sub region.