Roll Back Malaria and the new partnership for Africa's development: is there potential for synergistic collaboration in partnerships?

This synopsis seeks to highlight and promote the enormous potential that exists between these two initiatives that seek to address closely related issues and targeting the same populations at risk within a fairly well defined geographical setting. It also attempts to argue that malaria control, just like HIV-AIDS control, be given high priority in the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) health agenda, as current statistics indicate that malaria is again on the rise. While much attention and billions of dollars have rightly been given to HIV-AIDS research, treatment and prevention, malaria, and not AIDS, is the region's leading cause of morbidity and mortality for children under the age of five years. This is the bad news. The good news is that unlike AIDS, malaria treatment and prevention are relatively cheap. In addition, there is a payback to fighting malaria; support aimed directly at improving health, rather than poverty reduction, may be a more effective way of helping Africa to thrive. Robust and sustained growth may come to Africa through a mosquito net, Artemisinin-based Combination Therapies (ACTs) or a malaria vaccine, rather that a donor's cheque for economic development initiatives.