Giving Compass' Take:

• Devex interviews Dr. Pedro Alonso, director of the World Health Organization’s Global Malaria Programme, about what needs to be done to eradicate the disease and where the funding shortfalls are.

• The big takeaways is that the malaria fight has progressed, but is now stagnant — and much has to do with the need for more innovation. Can nonprofits and policy-makers help push us to a brighter future?

• Here's why global malaria prevention hinges on Africa.

The fight to eliminate malaria stands at a crossroads, health experts argue, facing obstacles such as a need for new interventions, and insecticide-resistant mosquitoes that threaten to reverse advances made against the preventable disease over the previous decade.

World Malaria Day 2018, marked on April 25 under the theme of “ready to beat malaria,” serves to highlight the 7 million deaths already averted due to the strides made against malaria under the Millennium Development Goals. However, according to the 2017 World Malaria Report, there were 5 million more cases in 2016 than the year prior, emphasizing the need for consistent engagement of political actors, private sector donors, and scientists and researchers to reach the last mile.

The recent slowdown in progress against malaria coincides with a parallel slump in per capita financial support over the past six years, Dr. Pedro Alonso, director of the World Health Organization’s Global Malaria Programme, told Devex on the sidelines of the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria conference in Senegal earlier this month. “With population growth, that means that per capita investment in the fight against malaria is decreasing in a great number of countries,” he said.

Malaria response also remains constrained by current technologies on the market, Alonso explained, “so it doesn’t seem hard to imagine that with the same level of funding, [the] same tools, we are seeing the limit to what we can do.”

Read the full interview with WHO malaria director Dr. Pedro Alonso by Christin Roby at Devex International Development.