Efforts to control malaria and cut its colossal death toll on the young and poor will fail if governments and big business retreat into self-interest during the economic downturn, one of Wall Street’s pioneers has told The Times.

Ray Chambers, who masterminded some of the biggest private equity deals of the 1980s, said that the private sector must take on the responsibility of helping to drive down rates of malaria. The mosquito-borne disease, which is preventable and treatable, currently kills more than a million people a year and threatens half the world’s population, with pregnant women and children most at risk.

Mr Chambers called for “extreme vigilance” to bring malaria under control and a major drive to increase public awareness as three of Britain’s biggest sports stars yesterday lent their support to the charity he set up to combat the disease.

David Beckham, Andy Murray and Denise Lewis pledged their backing to Malaria No More UK, the British extension of the charity co-founded by Mr Chambers, on a visit to 10 Downing Street. All three said that they had been moved to act because the funding of very basic interventions, such as bed-nets costing just a few pounds, could protect whole families from dying.

Mr Chambers, who is the United Nations’s Special Envoy for Malaria, praised Gordon Brown’s leadership and commitments made by the Government, which last week pledged £40 million to a scheme to cut anti-malarial drug prices and widen access for people in developing countries. He added that last month he had addressed 70 leading private equity businessmen in New York on philanthropy and its emotional rewards, prompting several audience members to write cheques for Malaria No More in the auditorium.

“There is a need to continue the donations - more now than ever before - because if that support does not continue malaria will just spiral. We will lose a real chance to make a difference. We need to talk to the private sector and make the best use of the money that is received.

“It is important for us all - in government and in the private sector - to make sure the Global Fund does not miss a beat and gets replenished as powerfully as it needs to be.”

Two key targets have been set as part of the Global Malaria Action Plan - providing universal treatment coverage by the end of 2010 and near-zero deaths by 2015 - with the ultimate goal of the gradual elimination of malaria. However both remain extremely challenging, with fears that they will recede even further in the current economic climate.

Mr Chambers said that he had experienced extraordinary fulfillment from donating tens of millions of dollars and concentrating all his business acumen on the cause.

“My interest grew from philanthropic work I was doing with disadvantaged children throughout the world. Somebody showed me a photo three years ago of children in a village in Malawi, asleep. I remember remarking on how angelic they were. I was told they were all in malarial comas and they had all died. I will never get that image out of my mind.”

Mr Chambers set up Malaria No More with Peter Chernin, president and chief operating officer of News Corporation, the parent company of The Times, in 2006. Their approach was to apply their private sector expertise and networks to tackle the world’s biggest solvable health crisis and to ensure that everyone in Africa has access to prevention and treatment.

Beckham, Murray and Lewis have been named as members of the leadership council of Malaria No More UK, which launched yesterday. They posed for photographs with the Mr Brown outside 10 Downing Street, whose iconic front door was draped in a malaria net to highlight one of the most effective ways of preventing the disease.

Malaria No More UK wants to ensure that the Government meets its promise in full as its share of a total of 100 million nets pledged by the world’s eight richest state. A year after Mr Brown’s pledge, Britain has delivered some 9.7 million nets to Africa, and a further 1.9 million are on order. For just £5, a net can be bought, transported and delivered to an African family, protecting a mother and child or brother and sister for up to five years. About 90 per cent of deaths from malaria each year are in Africa, where the disease kills a child every 30 seconds.

Beckham, the AC Milan and England football star, said it was possible to stop the killer disease for ever. “For less than the cost of a football you can protect a family from dying,” he said. “I urge the UK public to get behind the Malaria No More UK campaign to save a life and make malaria no more.”

Sarah Kline, the charity’s executive director in Britain, said that despite Britain being home to many of the key international agencies and scientists who were leading the fight against malaria, there was no one charity dedicated to raising public awareness of the disease.

“When you think that malaria kills one child every 30 seconds and three times as many under-5s as HIV/Aids, there is a desperate need in increase our understanding and awareness of this disease,” she said.

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