UK govt and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announce £3 billion malaria fund

George Osborne, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Bill Gates, co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, have announced a funding of £3 billion ($4.28 billion) over the next five years to aid research and other efforts to eliminate malaria in the UK.

The initiative has been welcomed by Global Fund, a partnership between governments, civil society, the private sector designed to accelerate the end of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria as epidemics.

The new fund will accelerate gains made against the mosquito-borne disease. Global efforts have already achieved a 60% decline in deaths since 2000, when malaria killed one million people, mostly young children. The announcement underscores the need to expand efforts to eliminate this preventable disease.