From the Core to the Peripheries: Multilateral Governance of Malaria in a Multi-Cultural World

This article discusses multilateral malaria control strategy, the RBM, its mission, vision, and relationship with traditional therapies in malaria-endemic societies, especially in Africa, where malaria is one of the biggest contributors to the burdens of disease. Because big multilateral partnerships like the RBM are almost always guilty of the charges of non-transparency, non-responsiveness, and insensitivity to the local constituencies they serve, I use Richard Falk's twin concepts of "globalism-from-above" and "globalism-from-below" to explore the interaction between the RBM and traditional therapies in malaria-endemic societies. In search of a transparent cosmopolitan malaria regime, I propose a transnational dialogue between all the relevant actors and stakeholders: multilateral health institutions, pharmaceutical corporations, indigenous populations, traditional healers, and civil society. We need to synthesize the tension between the core (policies of multilateral institutions) and the peripheries (traditional therapies in malaria-endemic societies).

This synthesis must proceed in a way that projects multilateralization of malaria as a humane enterprise rather than a predator that erodes age-long therapies of rural populations in malaria-endemic societies of the global South.