The Global Health Group at the University of California, San Francisco has received a $15 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in support of an effort to help nearly three dozen countries eliminate malaria within their borders.

Spread across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, the countries represent the boundary between regions that have already eliminated the disease and areas still struggling to control it. The grant will enable GHG's Malaria Elimination Initiative to conduct research on community-based strategies to identify areas that are close to eliminating the disease, determine the risk factors associated with transmission of the disease, and explore effective interventions for these high-risk groups.

The initiative, which includes political, financial, and research components, aims to persuade world leaders to back their support for anti-malaria campaigns with funding; develop new tools to detect infections and respond to them effectively; and discover better ways of tracking the disease. According to GHG, with effective interventions, adequate financing, and sufficient political will, countries where the disease is present today could eliminate the disease within ten years. 

"Ninety-three countries have eliminated malaria since 1900, and we have recently seen unprecedented momentum in the one hundred countries with remaining transmission," said Global Health Group director Sir Richard Feachem. "We and our partners across the globe will do everything possible to continue this remarkable progress towards global eradication. Our priority is to ensure that the 34 eliminating countries have the resources, policies, and tools to free themselves from malaria."