Vestergaard calls for continued innovation, partnership, and investment in much-needed malaria prevention tools at the 2024 United to Beat Malaria Leadership Summit and supports the advocacy for secured funding.

At this year’s record-breaking United to Beat Malaria (UBM) Leadership Summit, Vestergaard underscored the importance of prioritising investment in malaria tools with the highest cost-effectiveness while emphasising the continued need for innovation and partnerships. The Summit resulted in meetings with 160 Congressional Offices from 41 states to advocate for strong leadership support and funding for the US President’s Malaria Initiative, the Global Fund, Gavi, UNICEF, and CDC.

As a long-time partner of UBM and continued sponsor of the Leadership Summit, Vestergaard was honoured to have the opportunity to share our expertise with the Summit participants and bring attention to critical strategic challenges we face today in the fight against malaria. 

While acknowledging the significant progress made, Patrick Sieyes, Head of Global Growth, spoke on the panel on Gamechangers in Malaria Prevention, highlighting that beyond the current crop of tools, more innovation and partnerships are needed to continue to evolve our LLINs faster than the mosquito develops resistance. According to the Innovative Vector Control Consortium (IVCC), country programmes should have access to at least three types of insecticides with different modes of action for true insecticide resistance management. In addition, new types of vector control tools are needed to address the Anopheles stephensi species, and outdoor and early biting by mosquitoes. 

Carol Essex and Patrick Sieyes represented Vestergaard at the United to Beat Malaria’s Leadership Summit in Washington DC.

With new and proven innovations like vaccines, SMC, IPTp and dual AI nets, we need to campaign for better funding to make sure these tools can be deployed at scale. Investments in malaria prevention tools also have wider health systems and economic and security benefits. Current funding levels will need to triple by 2030 to meet global targets of USD 10.3 billion per year. To close the funding gap, we must strategically allocate public health spending to save the most lives by investing in the most effective tools.

Vestergaard will continue to support initiatives that aim to galvanise support and rally the global malaria community to collaborate and intensify our efforts in the fight against malaria. 

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