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Impact of malaria on Africa led to creation of global project

GENEVA (AP) _ The impact of the killer disease malaria on Africa is so devastating that the United Nations and other international organizations have formed a global campaign to fight it.

``Malaria has been estimated to cost Africa more than US$12 billion every year in lost GDP, even though it could be controlled for a fraction of that sum,’’ says the Roll Back Malaria partnership spearheaded by the World Health Organization.

The U.N. health agency says a conservative estimate is that the mosquito-borne disease kills more than one million people a year, the vast majority in Africa, but concedes that estimates of 2.7 million or even higher may be correct.

``A lot of the deaths are in children under 5, but they might not be recorded as malaria deaths,’’ said WHO spokesman Iain Simpson. He said the estimate of 2.7 million was an attempt to include otherwise uncounted malaria deaths.

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