{"id":1809,"date":"2016-01-18T09:53:28","date_gmt":"2016-01-18T09:53:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/?p=1809"},"modified":"2016-01-18T09:53:28","modified_gmt":"2016-01-18T09:53:28","slug":"white-house-letter-obamas-goal-to-wipe-out-malaria-may-be-a-dream-too-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/2016\/01\/18\/white-house-letter-obamas-goal-to-wipe-out-malaria-may-be-a-dream-too-far\/","title":{"rendered":"White House Letter: Obama\u2019s Goal to Wipe Out Malaria May Be a Dream Too Far"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"lede-container\">\n<figure id=\"media-100000004150416\" class=\"media photo lede layout-large-horizontal\" data-media-action=\"modal\"><span class=\"caption-text\">\u00a0<\/span><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p id=\"story-continues-1\" class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"284\" data-total-count=\"284\">WASHINGTON \u2014 Two days before delivering his last State of the Union address, President Obama called one of his top advisers into the Oval Office and said he had decided to add a major pledge to the speech that his team had neither discussed nor vetted: to rid the world of malaria.<\/p>\n<aside id=\"middle-right-paid-post-container\" class=\"ad middle-right-ad paid-post-ad hidden nocontent robots-nocontent\">\n<h2 class=\"marginalia-heading\"><\/h2>\n<\/aside>\n<p id=\"story-continues-2\" class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"195\" data-total-count=\"479\">\u201cIt was his belief that we were nearing a kind of tipping point when we should set a major goal of eradicating malaria,\u201d said the aide, Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"96\" data-total-count=\"575\">Mr. Rhodes was given 48 hours to make sure the president could follow through on his commitment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"135\" data-total-count=\"710\">The result was two sentences about how, in part through American commitment, the world could soon \u201cend the scourge of H.I.V.\/AIDS.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"151\" data-total-count=\"861\">\u201cAnd we have the chance to accomplish the same thing with malaria \u2014 something I\u2019ll be pushing this Congress to fund this year,\u201d Mr. Obama said.<\/p>\n<p id=\"story-continues-3\" class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"187\" data-total-count=\"1048\">The pledge sent a frisson of excitement through researchers and philanthropic organizations focused on malaria, a disease that remains one of the top killers of children around the world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"182\" data-total-count=\"1230\">\u201cWhat the president said in the State of the Union really matters,\u201d said Martin Edlund, the chief executive of Malaria No More, an advocacy group. \u201cIt\u2019s a really big deal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"205\" data-total-count=\"1435\">Other experts were skeptical. Dyann F. Wirth, the director of the Harvard Malaria Initiative, is one of many malaria experts who have expressed doubts that the disease can be eradicated in the near future.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"211\" data-total-count=\"1646\">\u201cI do not believe that we have the arsenal that could lead to eradication,\u201d Dr. Wirth said. \u201cBut it is true that the disease is interruptible. That\u2019s been done in many places, and that is not trivial.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"368\" data-total-count=\"2014\">Mr. Obama\u2019s fight against malaria builds on that of President George W. Bush, who as an outgrowth of his work against H.I.V.\/AIDS in Africa began the President\u2019s Malaria Initiative with a five-year, $1.2 billion initiative that received $30 million its first year to, among other things, distribute insecticide-treated mosquito nets in Angola, Tanzania and Uganda.<\/p>\n<div id=\"Moses\" class=\"ad moses-ad nocontent robots-nocontent\">Continue reading the main story<\/div>\n<p id=\"story-continues-4\" class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"325\" data-total-count=\"2339\">Under Mr. Obama, the President\u2019s Malaria Initiative has grown into a $618 million program that works in 19 African countries as well as the Mekong River region of Southeast Asia. The program continues to distribute mosquito nets and pays for household insecticide spraying and the rapid diagnosis and treatment of the sick.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"279\" data-total-count=\"2618\">The program accounts for a significant portion of global spending on anti-malaria efforts, which reached $2.5 billion in 2014. The United States government is responsible for about half of the total, and about half of America\u2019s spending comes from the president\u2019s initiative.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"438\" data-total-count=\"3056\">Despite undeniable progress, serious challenges remain. Malaria deaths have fallen by about two-thirds since 2000 \u2014 in large measure because more than half of Africa\u2019s population now sleeps under mosquito nets, compared with just 2 percent in 2000 \u2014 and 6.2 million lives have been saved. Even so, last year the world had an estimated 214 million new malaria cases and 438,000 deaths. Of those fatalities, 91 percent were in Africa.<\/p>\n<div id=\"MiddleRight1\" class=\"ad ad-placeholder nocontent robots-nocontent\">Continue reading the main story<\/div>\n<div id=\"MiddleRightN\" class=\"ad text-ad middle-right-ad nocontent robots-nocontent\">Continue reading the main story<\/div>\n<p id=\"story-continues-5\" class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"402\" data-total-count=\"3458\">Experts note that the decades spent on the as-yet unsuccessful campaign to eradicate polio demonstrate the profound challenges of ridding the world of a disease, and malaria could prove an even tougher fight. Nets wear out, for example, and resistance develops to pesticides and drugs. Resistance to artemisinin, a recently discovered malaria-fighting compound, is already widespread in Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"244\" data-total-count=\"3702\">More important, there is no malaria vaccine \u2014 several are in development, but none is consistently effective. Some experts believe a vaccine will never be made, in part because surviving a natural infection does not produce lifelong immunity.<\/p>\n<p id=\"story-continues-6\" class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"408\" data-total-count=\"4110\">But Mr. Obama\u2019s anti-malaria pledge is optimistic, and perhaps was influenced by the remarkable success over the past year of efforts to fight the Ebola virus and climate change. Mr. Rhodes said that somewhere in the stack of books and briefing documents that Mr. Obama took on vacation to Martha\u2019s Vineyard this past August is the reason he became aware of the success of previous anti-malarial efforts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"172\" data-total-count=\"4282\">Yet Mr. Obama\u2019s travels in Southeast Asia and his relatives in Africa gave him \u201ca human understanding of the toll that malaria takes on communities,\u201d Mr. Rhodes said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"352\" data-total-count=\"4634\">Mr. Obama subsequently mentioned malaria in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September, calling it \u201ca moral outrage\u201d that \u201cmany children are just one mosquito bite away from death.\u201d But his focus on achieving a climate deal in Paris in December left him little room for a new major international commitment, Mr. Rhodes said.<\/p>\n<p id=\"story-continues-7\" class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"241\" data-total-count=\"4875\">Once that was done, along with the Iran nuclear deal and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade accord, Mr. Obama \u201cwanted to set out the next areas where we have a sense of mission, and malaria was ripe to take that place,\u201d Mr. Rhodes said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"206\" data-total-count=\"5081\">Interestingly, while Mr. Obama made his malaria pledge in part because he had finished a global climate accord, one of Mr. Bush\u2019s advisers said he had tackled malaria in part because he had renounced one.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"518\" data-total-count=\"5599\">As Michael Gerson, a top White House adviser to Mr. Bush tells it, in preparations for a 2005 summit meeting of big industrial nations in Scotland, Tony Blair, the prime minister of Britain at the time, listed two priorities for the talks: climate change and Africa. Having renounced the Kyoto Protocol on emissions within months of taking office in 2001, an action that outraged some Western allies, Mr. Bush knew he could not do anything on that issue to mollify the Europeans. So that left Africa, Mr. Gerson said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"287\" data-total-count=\"5886\">Mr. Gerson, who had traveled extensively in Africa to oversee the Bush administration\u2019s fight against H.I.V.\/AIDS, said that when he returned from his trips, \u201cI would have lunch with the president and talk with him about malaria as part of the discussion of what I saw and found.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"142\" data-total-count=\"6028\">Mr. Bush, he said, became interested in the mosquito-driven scourge and, looking for something to take to Scotland, decided to attack malaria.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"196\" data-total-count=\"6224\">For Mr. Obama, the success of the campaign against the Ebola virus was an additional inspiration, said Gayle E. Smith, the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"204\" data-total-count=\"6428\">The United Nations declared on Thursday an end to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, although the World Health Organization said the next day that a body in Sierra Leone had tested positive for the virus.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"209\" data-total-count=\"6637\">Ms. Smith said Mr. Obama had \u201clooked at malaria and concluded that if we combine the continued progress, our leadership and another big international push, we can actually get to the point of eradication.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"197\" data-total-count=\"6834\">One challenge that remains is the task of getting new money from Congress, although Senator John Boozman, a Republican from Arkansas who has long been interested in malaria, said he was supportive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"146\" data-total-count=\"6980\">\u201cWe need to build upon the success that we\u2019ve had starting under President George W. Bush and continuing into this administration,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; WASHINGTON &mdash; Two days before delivering his last State of the Union address, President Obama called one of his top advisers into the Oval Office and said he had decided to add a major pledge to the speech that his team had neither discussed nor vetted: to rid the world of malaria. &ldquo;It was his belief that we were nearing a kind of tipping point when we should set a major goal of eradicating malaria,&rdquo; said the aide, Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser. Mr. Rhodes was<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1810,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1809"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1809"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1811,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1809\/revisions\/1811"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}