Despite significant progress fighting malaria over the past few decades, the disease still kills around 600,000 people annually. Malaria is a leading cause of death globally, especially for young children in Africa, who make up around 70% of all malaria deaths worldwide.1See the WHO fact sheet on malaria, which states “Globally in 2024, there were an estimated 282 million malaria cases and 610 000 malaria deaths in 80 countries…the WHO African Region was home to 95% of malaria cases (265 million) and 95% (579,000) of malaria deaths. Children under 5 accounted for about 75% of all malaria deaths in the Region.” 75% * 95% = 71%. jQuery(‘#footnote_plugin_tooltip_16572_1_1’).tooltip({ tip: ‘#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_16572_1_1’, tipClass: ‘footnote_tooltip’, effect: ‘fade’, predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: ‘top right’, relative: true, offset: [10, 10], });
While malaria prevention has long been a focus for GiveWell, the growing capacity and specialized expertise on our malaria team are allowing us to take on this challenge now in a way that would not have been possible even a few years ago.
Over our nineteen-year history, GiveWell has directed more than $1 billion in donations to malaria prevention programs that we estimate will save more than 235,000 lives. This is primarily through two core programs:2As other prevention programs have emerged, such as malaria vaccines, we have also supported them when we estimated that doing so would be highly cost-effective. jQuery(‘#footnote_plugin_tooltip_16572_1_2’).tooltip({ tip: ‘#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_16572_1_2’, tipClass: ‘footnote_tooltip’, effect: ‘fade’, predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: ‘top right’, relative: true, offset: [10, 10], });
Seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC), which provides preventive antimalarial medication to young children during the months when malaria is mostly likely to be transmitted. We have directed more than $500 million to support SMC, most via Malaria Consortium’s SMC program, one of our Top Charities.
Insecticide-treated nets, which are typically hung over beds or other sleeping spaces to provide protection from mosquitoes at night. We have directed more than $600 million to support net campaigns, most via Against Malaria Foundation, another of our Top Charities.
GiveWell’s overall research team has doubled in size over the past few years. Our malaria research team is the largest of our research teams, with 15 people collectively devoting more than 20,000 hours each year to our expanded efforts.3We expect each research staff member contributes about 1,840 hours per year, accounting for holidays and time off, about 75% of which is spent on research work (1840 x 15 x 0.75 = 20,700). For more on how we calculate research hours per person, see here. jQuery(‘#footnote_plugin_tooltip_16572_1_3’).tooltip({