Need help with malaria statistics - help please!

What is $25 billion...? $25 billion is one hundredth of one hundredth of the income of the developed world. That is one penny in every £100 you and I earn. $25 billion is the cost of the control of malaria and therefore the cost of the very future of Sub Saharan Africa.

These are the calculations outlined by Professor Jeffrey Sachs at the annual International Health Medical Education Centre/Lancet lecture held on October 15th, 2002. Professor Sachs, who is special advisor to Secretary General of the UN Kofi Annan, is concerned with malaria's impact on, not only health, but economic development. Malaria has been the 'great chapter of African poverty' according to Sachs, costing more than one percentage point per year of economic growth in some regions.

The question remains, why does the malaria problem still exist? Sachs's answer was "It's all about the money. Malaria is treatable… and utterly affordable". He estimated the price tag to be "1/25 of what we are about to spend on the war with Iraq". It is therefore a question of priorities and malaria has been marginalised. As a consequence, even the mortality rate of malaria is unknown - somewhere between one and three million people per year. As Sachs puts it, "It doesn't pay to count and nobody does".

http://www.ihmec.ucl.ac.uk/events/sachs1.html