Bill Gates donates $168 m to fight malaria 23.09.2003   The world’s richest man has donated $168 million to fight malaria, and urged the world to intensify its battle against a disease that kills more than one million people a year, mainly in Africa.

"MANHICA, Mozambique: The world’s richest man has donated $168 million to fight malaria, and urged the world to intensify its battle against a disease that kills more than one million people a year, mainly in Africa. "It’s time to treat Africa’s malaria epidemic like the crisis it is,’’ Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said on Sunday during a visit to Mozambique.

"Malaria is robbing Africa of its people and its potential beyond the extraordinary human toll, malaria is one of the greatest barriers to Africa’s economic growth, draining national budgets and deepening poverty,’’ he told reporters.

Malaria is the biggest killer in Africa alongside HIV/AIDS, killing about 3,000 children a day and costing the world’s poorest continent about $12 billion a year in lost income.

The grants from Gates and his foundation exceed the $100 million allocated globally for research into the killer disease and will be used to fund research on new malaria-prevention strategies for children, new vaccines and new drugs.

Mozambique — one of the world’s poorest countries — is also one of the nations worst hit by malaria, a parasitic disease transmitted by the female anopheles mosquito that destroys red blood cells and impairs blood flow to vital organs.

But Mozambique’s Manhica research center, funded by Gates, may be close to finding a new method for treating infants, known as the "intermittent preventive treatment.’’

This involves administering the anti-malaria drug sulfadoxine pirimetanine three times during a child’s first year of life.

Early studies showed this treatment could reduce malaria among infants by nearly 60 percent and halve the incidence of severe anemia resulting from the disease.