A rare malaria victory

I've been looking into how global health programs evaluate the effects of their interventions for a story that will appear in our March issue. Public health experts have told me again and again that too little attention has been paid to evaluation across the board. This morning (Feb.1), both linkurl:__The Washington Post__;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/31/AR2008013101943.html?wpisrc=newsletter and linkurl:__The New York Times__;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/health/01malaria.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin reported on a study by the World Health Organization that seems to address this issue. The study looked at how well distributing of insecticide-treated bed nets and linkurl:artemisinin,;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/36878/ the newest anti-malarial drug, affected rates of child malaria deaths in Ethiopia, Ghana, Rwanda, and Zambia. The team found that children's deaths from malaria have dropped by about 50 percent in Ethiopia, where 20 million nets were distributed over two years, and by more than 60 percent in Rwanda, where two million nets were distributed over two months in 2006. The 33 percent decline in...