The first major external evaluation of the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) initiative has warned that the scheme will fail unless it is speedily revamped.

A panel chaired by Richard Feachem, director of the Institute for Global Health in California, says that the initiative, which aims to halve the world’s malaria burden by 2010, needs stronger leadership, a management overhaul and tight focus on a small number of countries where its ideas stand a chance of being put into practice.

The RBM initiative was launched in 1998 by the World Health Organisation as a partnership with the World Bank and the United Nations, and has since been joined by more than 90 other partners. It aims to direct a comprehensive global effort against the disease, which affects up to 500 million people and kills a million of them each year.

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