Santo Domingo. – Former United States president Jimmy Carter on Thursday launched a joint Dominican Republic-Haiti program to eradicate malaria and phylariasis on Hispaniola Island within 10 years.

The US$19.9 million program will be used on house to house search for cases, free treatment and mosquito control, repellents for mosquito nets and walls in high risk areas, as well as providing information and social mobilization on the entire island.

Carter said though Haiti’s problem is more serious than Dominican Republic’s, the migratory flow across the border forces both nations to work together. He blamed the disease’s continued presence on this island, as in other parts of the world, on the lack of permanent cooperation between both countries.

He said in Dominican Republic the authorities have worked to control malaria, but not to eradicate it, and that the program would cost just one dollar per person per day on the island.

In a press conference together with Health minister Bautista Rojas and other officials, Carter noted that phylariasis and malaria affect an estimated 5 percent of Haiti’s population, compared with 1.5 percent in the Dominican Republic.

In that regard Tropical Diseases Control Program director Jose Manuel Puello revealed that seven people have died from malaria in the country this year, compared with 11 deaths the year before.