Deaths from malaria have returned to pre-Covid levels, but the World Health Organization (WHO) says progress remains too slow in fighting a disease that killed 597,000 people last year.
In a report released on Wednesday, the WHO estimates there were 263 million cases of malaria worldwide in 2023 – 11 million more than the previous year.
It also found that the death toll remained relatively stable. In terms of the overall mortality rate, “we have come back to pre-pandemic numbers”, according to Arnaud Le Menach, of the WHO’s Global Malaria Programme.
In 2020, disruptions caused by the Covid pandemic led to a sharp increase in malaria-related mortality, with an additional 55,000 deaths counted that year.
Since then the total number of deaths from the disease – which is caused by a mosquito-borne parasite – has gradually shrunk, as has the mortality rate.
Why is malaria so difficult to combat?
However, the estimated 2023 mortality rate in Africa of 52 deaths per 100,000 population still remains more than double the target set by a global strategy for combatting malaria through 2030. The WHO is insisting that “progress must be accelerated”.
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The WHO has pointed to the wider rollout of malaria vaccines as a promising development, expected to save tens of thousands of young lives each year.
The two jabs currently in use – RTS,S and R21/Matrix-M – hold the promise of significantly easing the burden in Africa, which accounts for up to 95 percent of all malaria deaths.
Malaria vaccines were rolled out on the continent in April 2019 – first in Malawi, with Kenya and Ghana following suit.
According to the WHO, by the end of 2023 almost 2 million children in those three countries had received jabs of the RTS,S vaccine.
“We saw in those three pilot countries … a 13 percent drop in mortality during the four years of the pilot programme,” said Mary Hamel, who heads the WHO’s malaria vaccine team.
The organisation is now anticipating a similar drop in other countries introducing the vaccines, with Hamel pointing out that the countries that began introducing the jabs early this year were “following a similar trajectory”.
So far, 17 nations across sub-Saharan Africa have included the vaccines in their routine immunisation programmes.
A further eight countries had been approved to receive funding towards introducing the inoculations through the GAVI vaccine alliance.
‘Curb the threat’
In another promising development, new-generation dual-insecticide nets are becoming more widely available.
The nets – which are coated in a pyrrole insecticide in combination with the standard pyrethroid insecticide – have been shown to offer far better protection against malaria.
The WHO estimated earlier this year that such nets had averted 13 million malaria cases and nearly 25,000 deaths over three years.
Despite these successes, the WHO highlighted a number of factors slowing the battle against malaria, including a lack of funds and insufficient stocks of vaccines – as well as climate change, which is allowing a greater spread of the mosquitos that carry the parasite that causes malaria.
“Stepped-up investments and action in high-burden African countries are needed to curb the threat,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
