Africa Fighting Malaria (AFM) is an NGO based in Washington DC and South Africa which states it "seeks to educate people about the scourge of Malaria and the political economy of malaria control". The organization generally "promotes market based solutions and economic freedom as the best ways to ensure improved welfare and longer life expectancy in poor countries", according to their financial statement[1]. Founded in 2000 during the Stockholm Negotiations on Persistent Organic Pollutants, AFM's original focus was the promotion of a public health exemption for the insecticide DDT for malaria control. According to their current website, their mission is to "make malaria control more transparent, responsive and effective by holding public institutions accountable for funding and implementing effective, integrated and country-driven malaria control policies." AFM has been characterized by liberal observers as a "right-wing" "propaganda machine."[2]
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Formed in 2000, AFM's staff members have current or former links with a range of right-wing and free market think tanks including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Institute of Economic Affairs and Tech Central Station, organisations that are all critical of environment movements, as is AFM itself.
AFM promotes the pesticide DDT as one of the most effective means of fighting malaria. It asserts that global health organizations must be free to employ all available tools to fight malaria and that the limited use of DDT for spraying homes and hospitals is a powerful and necessary tool in this fight. Based on a document authored by the AFM's founder Roger Bate, critics argue that the group's motivation for promoting DDT has more to do with a careful crafted strategy to divide and discredit the environmental movement than it does with genuine concern for the health of Africans.[2][3][4][5]
AFM ran a "Save Children From Malaria" campaign designed to prevent the Stockholm Convention from banning the use of DDT. The coalition consisted of :
In June 2010, blogger Ed Darrell attempted to find AFM projects that actually reduce malaria infections in Africa. After examining AFM's own reports, tax records, and searching the internet, Darrell concluded that "the major purpose of AFM is to pay [founder] Roger Bate about $100,000 a year for part of the time, and pay [director] Richard Tren more than $80,000 a year for the rest of the time."[6]
On its website AFM states that it "receives its funding from a number of different sources, however because of the nature of our work we have a policy of not accepting funds from any government, the insectcides industry or the pharmaceutical industry".
Funders listed on the AFM website[7] include :
AFM has also received funding from[8]:
Other sources of funding:
Documents in the Legacy Tobacco Document Archive [1] show that in the planning stages AFM unsuccessfully sought the support of the tobacco industry, which hoped to divert resources from efforts by the World Health Organization to reduce smoking. [2] [3]. Investigative reporter Adam Sarvana describes AFM as a "front group".[3]