It will be three years until the success of an international initiative to combat malaria is known.

Roll Back Malaria, an international group of 90 organisations launched to tackle malaria, says that while more people now have access to preventative measures such as mosquito nets and the newest malaria medicines, it is not clear whether the annual one million death rate is falling.

Within three years, says a report from Roll Back Malaria, the impact of the initiative will be clear,but the very fact that more people now have access to ways of preventing and treating the disease offers grounds for hope.

“Many countries are moving forward with malaria control programmes, and even those with limited resources and a heavy malaria burden now have a better opportunity to gain ground against this disease,” said Dr Jong-wook Lee, director-general of WHO, one of the partners in Roll Back Malaria. “However, proven interventions, such as insecticide-treated nets and the latest artemisinin-based combination therapies, must reach many more people before we can have a real impact on malaria.”

The campaign aims to halve deaths from the disease by 2010 but it is proving a serious challenge to increase investment from the international community.

The Roll Back Malaria partnership estimate that$3.2 billion a year is needed to combat malaria in the 82 worst affected countries,but only a fifth of this is currently being found.

However the World Bank recently announced it would commit up to $1 billion over the next five years to help people gain access to essential malaria prevention and treatment.

The report says that in 2003, between 350 and 500 million people worldwide became ill with malaria. There is concern that despite the massive death toll from the disease, it is not gaining anything like the attention of the HIV-AIDS pandemic.

“At present malaria remains the infectious disease that takes more lives of children in Africa than any other – three times as many as HIV infection.“ said Ann Veneman, executive director of UNICEF. “If we are going to dramatically reduce child deaths in the next decade, we need to put more focus on combating malaria.”

The Roll Back Malaria Global Partnership was launched in 1998 by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, UNDP and the World Bank.

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Roll Back Malaria Partnership