Chaka Chaka: Wage war against malaria
South African singer Yvonne Chaka Chaka urged world leaders Saturday to wage war against malaria as she paid emotional tribute to a band member who died two years ago of the disease, which kills more than a million people every year. Phumzile Ntuli was infected while on tour with Chaka Chaka in Gabon in 2004. Upon her return to South Africa, she fell into a coma, from which she never recovered. Associated Press, 1st July 2006

Unknown malaria strain kills 27 in Tanzania
Twenty-seven people have fallen victim in one day to an unknown strain of malaria in westernmost Tanzania while 410 others are still hospitalised for the disease, according to reports on Saturday. Children and pregnant women have accounted for more than half of these in-patients. Xinhua, 1st July 2006

Malaria, dengue fever alert on Thai-Myanmar border
Refugees from continuing violence in the Myanmar countryside adjacent to Thailand, together with an earlier than normal rainy season in the heavily-forested border region means that the incidence and danger of contracting malaria is higher than usual. ETNA, 28th June 2006

Malaria kills 55, affects thousands in India
A new strain of malaria has killed 55 people and affected more than 18,000 others in India's eastern state of West Bengal since January, the World Health Organisation and the state government said on Monday. "All the deaths could be a result of poor surveillance and drug resistance, but we are still trying to find answers," K.C. Barui, state director of health services, told Reuters. Reuters, 26th June 2006

Business Joins African Effort to Cut Malaria
With malaria spread across southern Mozambique, executives at the international mining company Billiton expected some workers to call in sick as it began building a massive new aluminium smelter amid the cornfields here. What they did not expect was that nearly one in three employees would fall ill - 6,600 cases in just two years. And they certainly did not expect 13 deaths, not after the company had built a medical clinic, doused the construction site with pesticides and handed out bed nets to thwart malaria-carrying mosquitoes. New York Times, 29th June 2006

Economic costs of malaria
"Malaria affects the health and wealth of nations and individuals alike. In Africa today, malaria is understood to be both a disease of poverty and a cause of poverty. Malaria has significant measurable direct and indirect costs, and has recently been shown to be a major constraint to economic development. For developing economies this has meant that the gap in prosperity between countries with malaria and countries without malaria has become wider every single year." World Health Organisation

Roll Back Malaria Global Initiative
To provide a co-ordinated international approach to fighting malaria, the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Global Partnership was launched in 1998 by the World Health Organisation, UNICEF, UNDP and the World Bank. RBM's goal is to halve the burden of malaria by 2010. This site contains up-to-date information about malaria, including malaria FAQs, multimedia resources and publications.

www.rollbackmalaria.org

Malaria: Killer Number One
Filmed in Ethiopia and produced by IRIN Films (part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), Malaria: Killer Number One can be viewed online at www.irinnews.org/film/ using Realplayer or Windows Media Player (duration 19:43 minutes). This film is a vivid account of the suffering of people struck by malaria and charts the challenges the international community faces in combating one of the world's deadliest diseases. Linked to the documentary is a website with a wealth of resources on the topic including background information, stories, maps, interviews, illustrations and links.

"There is a silent tsunami underway all the time in rural Africa. Every month, as many children die of malaria in Africa as died in the tsunami - about 150,000 children dying every month." Dr Jeffery Sachs PhD, Director of the UN Millennium Project, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University

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