World Malaria Report, 2020

The World Malaria Report, 2020 was recently released by the World Health Organisation. As per the report, India recorded the largest reduction in malaria cases in South East Asia. The case count has reduced from 20 million in 2000 to around 5.6 million in 2019. The report also stated that the global malaria case count has remained unchanged for the past four years. In 2019, the number was around 229 million. According to the world Malaria report, 2020 prepared by the World Health Organisation, India was one among the 11 highest Malaria burden countries in the world.

Key findings of the report

• India is the largest contributor of Malaria cases in the south-east Asia region. Around 88% of Malaria cases in the region are from India.
• India has reduced the Malaria cases by 21% between 2018 and 2019.
• India has also reduced the malarial deaths in the past two years. In 2019, the number of deaths due to malaria in India was 409,000. It was 411,000 in 2018. This has made India one of the largest contributors to drop in malaria cases in the south-east Asia region.
• According to the report the highest Malaria burden countries were Cameron, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Mali, Ghana, India, Nigeria and United Republic of Tanzania. These countries accounted to 70% of global estimated Malaria burden. Most of these countries were from Africa.
• African region accounted to more than 90% of overall malarial disease burden. However, since 2000 the number of Malaria deaths in the continent has reduced by 44%.
• The progress against malaria has not increased according to the WHO report. This is mainly due to the gaps in access to life saving tools and covid-19 pandemic. This is also due to shortfall in funding at both National and international levels. The malarial funding in 2019 reached 3 billion USD as against the target of 5.6 billion USD.

World Malaria Day: It is celebrated on April 25.

Month: Current Affairs - December, 2020