At a Gates Foundation conference on malaria, the WHO reported on Monday that deaths from the disease declined by about 20 percent over the past ten years and that if similar progress continues, in another ten years the disease may be eradicated from one third of the countries where it exists. By 2015, the agency said, some three million lives could be saved if gains are maintained.
That’s pretty dramatic news, but few mainstream journalistic organizations seem to have covered it. Did we already have that in the recent past? Malaria killed an estimated 781,000 people in 2009, according to WHO.
One of the few to pay attention was BBC News, albeit in an unbylined piece, which earlier had mistakenly reported the reduction as 40 percent.
Kate Kelland, writing for Reuters, notes that many countries were on track to eradicate the scourge as late as 1972, thanks to an earlier campaign, but that efforts faded and the disease spread again.
No sign of coverage by AP.
The Seattle Times, in whose back yard the conference is being held, published a fine curtain-raiser on the meeting on Saturday, written by Carol M. Ostrom. But as of Tuesday had not published anything out of the meeting. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has ignored it so far.
Maybe I’m making too much of this. Maybe this is old news that I missed. Let me know.
-Boyce Rensberger
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