Message on World Malaria Day, 2010
Two years ago, I called for malaria prevention and treatment programmes to be made universally available to at-risk populations by the end of 2010. This World Malaria Day brings much cause for satisfaction. In a very short time, the world has gone from simply trying to hold malaria at bay to the realistic goal of delivering effective and affordable care to all who need it. Furthermore, the scientific community has set a research agenda for developing the tools and strategies that will eventually eradicate malaria for good.

The short twentieth century, as defined by Eric Hobsbawm in 1995, was marked by important economic, social, and technical-scientific advances that improved the quality of life and health for millions of people around the world. However, as an age of extremes -- a phrase also coined by Hobsbawm -- the process of globalization began to create not only large international disparities, but also huge social and health problems, especially in countries excluded from the central axes of the global economy.

The first effective attempt to promote children's rights was the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, drafted by Eglantyne Jebb in 1923 and adopted by the League of Nations in 1924. On 20 November 1959, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a much expanded version as its own Declaration of the Rights of the Child, with ten principles in place of the original five. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) was the first legally binding international instrument to incorporate the full range of human rights, describing child-specific needs and rights. These human rights included civil, cultural, economic, political, and social rights, as well as aspects of humanitarian law.The UNCRC was signed in 1989, and entered into force in 1990. As of May 2010, it had 193 parties which had ratified, accepted, or acceded with stated reservations or interpretations, including every member of the United Nations except Somalia and the United States, which have only signed.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians make up 2.5 per cent of the Australian population and continue to suffer disproportionately from the consequences of European settlement. The life expectancy for Indigenous Australians is 10 years lower than that of other Australians; the death rates for Indigenous people are twice as high across all age groups; and intentional self-harm was the leading cause of death from external causes for Indigenous males between 2001 and 2005. Although definitive national data about the incidence and prevalence of mental health disorders among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians is not available, it is clear there are enormous disparities in mental health outcomes for Indigenous people.

Malaria, the world's most important and deadly tropical mosquito-borne parasitic disease, kills approximately 1 million people and afflicts as many as 1 billion people in 109 countries throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America.Reducing the impact of malaria will significantly enhance the efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, agreed upon by every United Nations Member State. Variation in climatic conditions, such as temperature, rainfall patterns, and humidity, has a profound effect on the longevity of the mosquito and on the development of malaria parasites in the mosquito and, subsequently, on malaria transmission.