Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to testify before you this morning in support of the Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI), a program of the non-profit organization PATH. I am appearing today to request that you provide, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), $3 million in fiscal year (FY) 2006 funds for vaccine research and development (R&D) being conducted by MVI. I also request that you boost overall FY 2006 spending on malaria.
I first want to thank you for your commitment and continued support for interventions to protect against malaria. Your efforts to include language above the $90 million in bilateral funding provided last year, language in the omnibus appropriations conference report calling for direct support of $3 million for MVI in FY 2003, as well as your funding recommendations for MVI in the FY 2004 Foreign Operations appropriations bill, resulted in a multi-year partnership with the USAID Program for International Development.
Although the $3 million per year target has yet to be met, funding to date has allowed MVI to accelerate efforts to develop a preventive vaccine that could save millions of children’s lives.
Specifically, this funding has allowed MVI to move a promising Walter Reed vaccine candidate that initially lagged due to insufficient funding, into a Phase 2 pediatric clinical trial in Kenya. That trial started just last week, and results are expected in early 2006.
Vaccines are now moving ahead more rapidly than ever in the history of malaria vaccine development due to such increases in funding.
Today alone, more than 3,000 children will die of malaria. Three thousand.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimates that malaria kills between two and three million people every year; most of them are children who live in poverty stricken countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Those who are not slain by this disease too often suffer debilitating effects. It is unacceptable that so many people fall ill or die every day from a largely preventable and treatable disease.
I applaud the wave of global support for programs to eliminate malaria experienced over the past two years. Malaria is now being called “low-hanging fruit” by some in the public health community due to notable progress made on several fronts in 2004. The implication here is that, if the appropriate forces are marshaled, major progress against malaria can be made over the next several years—progress in everything from the scale-up of bed nets and artemisinin-based combination therapy to development of vaccines and new drugs.
I also applaud the United States Congress for understanding the urgency of the malaria crisis and for pledging increased resources for malaria activities and programs over the past four years. Our nation’s pledge to help halve malaria deaths as part of the Millennium Development Goals and to provide funding through the Global Fund for AIDS, TB, and Malaria are definitely praiseworthy steps.
I believe that our charge now lies in ensuring that U.S. government spending on malaria increases in order to make the maximum possible impact on this disease now and into the future.
The message is clear: we must build on and accelerate success.
• Malaria-endemic countries need more support for a massive scale-up
of existing interventions to prevent as many malaria deaths as possible
with the tools currently available.
• Drug development programs need more support, as the malaria parasite
is complex and able to evolve—making widely used drugs less effective
over time.
• More support is also needed for malaria vaccine development. MVI
believes that to end deaths from malaria, the world needs a vaccine that
stops malaria before it starts—or at least before it becomes deadly.
When I testified before this committee in 2002, a malaria vaccine seemed a long way off. There has never been a licensed vaccine against a parasite that infects humans.
In 2004, the world experienced a scientific breakthrough as the RTS,S/AS02A vaccine, evaluated in children in Mozambique, cut roughly in half the number of severe malaria cases. The government and private dollars that have been spent on developing a malaria vaccine are paying off. These results are seen by many as the most significant advance ever in the 50-year quest for a malaria vaccine. They results also demonstrate that it is absolutely possible to make a vaccine that can protect children in Africa against malaria.
The U.S. has played an important role in the development of malaria vaccines. The RTS,S vaccine was initially developed in a partnership between the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and what is now GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals. Currently U.S. researchers are key to the development of improvements to this vaccine and to the development of other promising malaria vaccine candidates.
At a time when we are poised for even more success, funding is not keeping pace with developments. We need to boost malaria spending in light of recent successes.
Evidence proves that a malaria vaccine is possible. The vaccine pipelines are filling, which is good—more candidates mean more likelihood of success, especially if what is learned from them is applied across the field. The paradox is that as we are successful and move vaccines to later stages of development, the work becomes more expensive. Today it is truly money more than science that limits the creation of a new tool that could save millions of young lives.
I urge the committee to recommend that at least $3 million be provided in FY 2006 for the vaccine R&D being carried out by MVI. I also encourage the committee to increase overall FY 2006 spending on malaria including increased contributions to the Child Survival and Health account. The message that I want to leave with you today is clear; public dollars invested in malaria vaccine development are paying off. Money invested in this area is yielding concrete results that matter.
I thank you for your consideration.
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