The United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to halt and reverse the increase in malaria by 2015 is unlikely to be met, according to a statement published in the open access journal PLoS Medicine.

The eight MDGs were established by the United Nations in 2000 with a view to tackle global poverty and health inequality.

Goal 6 included the target to ‘halt and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases’.

Malaria is one of the world’s biggest killers, killing over a million people every year, mainly children and pregnant women in Africa and South-east Asia.

It is caused by the malaria parasite, which is injected into the bloodstream from the salivary glands of infected mosquitoes.

According to research conducted as part of the Malaria Atlas Project, over 40percent of the world’s population is at risk from infection from the P. falciparum parasite.

Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow Professor Bob Snow and colleagues from the University of Oxford, who developed the map, have identified the areas where risk is moderate or high and areas where the risk is relatively low and compared this to levels of funding to control malaria in these areas.

They also analyzed where funding was allocated for malaria control from major donors such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), the World Bank and the US President’s Initiative, and from national governments.