UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - An anti-poverty summit on Thursday pledged nearly three billion dollars to fund an ambitious malaria control plan to save more than 4.2 million lives around the world.

The funding, which includes 1.1 billion dollars from the World Bank, will be used to support rapid implementation of the first ever Global Malaria Action Plan (GMAP).
It was announced at a summit called by UN chief Ban Ki-moon to re-energize the race to achieve eight poverty reduction goals by a 2015 deadline.
World Bank President Robert Zoellick said in a statement that the extra money would help ""sharply reduce the numbers of malaria-related deaths and illness"" in the next three years.
According to GMAP's projections, more than 4.2 million lives can be saved between 2008 and 2015, if its plan is put into action, and the foundation can be laid for a longer-term effort to eradicate the disease.
Malaria affects half of the world's population -- 3.3 billion people in 109 countries -- and causes nearly one million deaths per year, according to UN officials.
The Global Fund to Fights AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria -- an international partnership of government, private sector and non-governmental organizations -- meanwhile said it was committing 1.62 billion dollars over two years in new grants for malaria control, including plans for distributing 100 million additional bed nets.
Billionaire and Microsoft founder Bill Gates said his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would provide 168.7 million dollars to fund a Malaria Vaccine Initiative for research on a new generation of malaria vaccines.
""We need innovation, new drugs, and the most dramatic thing we need is vaccine,"" Gates said.
He noted that malaria control programs ""are achieving impressive new gains,"" and that scientific innovation ""could soon give us powerful new vaccines and drugs.
""If we build on this momentum, we can save million of lives and chart a long-term course for eradication of this disease,"" Gates said.
Britain's Department for International Development pledged 40 million pounds (73.5 million dollars) to support the Affordable Medicines Facility for Malaria. It also pledged to hike its malaria research funding to at least five million pounds (9.1 million dollars) a year by 2010 and supply 20 million of the 125 million bed nets still needed in affected areas.
The GMAP offers a comprehensive blueprint for reducing malaria, providing timelines for delivering nets and drugs to all people at risk in Africa, Asia-Pacific, the Americas, the Middle East and Eurasia.
Africa alone is estimated to lose at least 12 billion dollars a year in direct costs from malaria, and much more in gross domestic product losses, GMAP officials said.
Achieving full control in all endemic countries, including strengthening health systems, will cost approximately 5.3 billion dollars in 2009, 6.2 billion in 2010 and 5.1 billion annually from 2011 to 2020, they noted.
The Global Malaria Action Plan marshals the efforts of 30 endemic countries and regions and 65 international institutions behind an unprecedented effort to achieve more rapid results against malaria.