Announcement: World Malaria Day — April 25, 2016

The World Malaria Day 2016 theme, “End Malaria for Good,” reflects a renewed global effort to eliminate malaria from countries with endemic malaria by the middle of this century. More than a century of global malaria control efforts resulted in the elimination of the disease from 24 countries by 1987, and progress toward elimination has accelerated in the last decade. In 2014, 16 additional countries reported no new annual cases, and in 2015, 33 additional countries reported fewer than 1,000 cases of malaria per year (1).

Current malaria control initiatives, led by the World Health Organization; the Roll Back Malaria Partnership; the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria; and the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative, have contributed to important reductions in malaria morbidity and mortality during the last 15 years. Since 2005, donors have supported the procurement and distribution of approximately 1 billion insecticide-treated bed nets and approximately 1 billion artemisinin combination antimalarial treatments globally (1). As a result of these and other investments since 2000, the estimated number of malaria deaths worldwide declined 48% from 839,000 to 438,000 in 2015, an accomplishment estimated to have saved the lives of approximately 6.2 million persons, mostly children aged <5 years (1).

Despite these improvements, 3.2 billion persons remain at risk for malaria each year. Through ongoing research to improve current interventions and develop new tools to support global malaria control, CDC and its global partners are committed to end malaria by preventing, detecting, and treating a growing portion of malaria cases.

References

1. World Health Organization. World malaria report 2015. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization; 2015. http://www.who.int/malaria/publications/world-malaria-report-2015/report/en/