Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly children, die in Africa each year from malaria, which is An ancient epidemic transmitted by mosquitoes and that has become increasingly prevalent during the COVID-19 outbreak period.
The World Health Organization estimates that 627,000 people died of malaria in 2020, the latest year for which data is available, a 12% increase from 2019.
Sub-Saharan Africa, the eastern Mediterranean, the Americas and areas in the Pacific such as Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands are all at risk.
Before 2020, the world was making steady progress in dealing with and treating malaria transmission, especially through the use of insecticide-treated mosquito nets and effective testing and drugs.
Annual costs resulted from it had fallen by 27% by 2017, compared to the beginning of the century, while deaths had fallen by more than 50%.
In June 2021, the World Health Organization approved that China was free of malaria, turning by that approval a page on a long battle that began in the 1940s when this Asian country was recording 30 million cases annually and China has not recorded any infection cases of local origin for four consecutive years.
About 241 million malaria cases were recorded globally in 2020, 14 million more than the previous year, according to the World Health Organization.
About two-thirds of the additional deaths announced in 2020 were related to the disruption of prevention, examination and treatment measures related to malaria during the outbreak of the Corona virus.
Many patients have avoided going to hospitals for fear of contracting Covid infection.
95% of all malaria infections and 96% of deaths from malaria occur in sub-Saharan Africa.
Half of the reported cases worldwide in 2020 were recorded in four African countries: Nigeria (31.9% of the reported cases), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (13.2%), Tanzania (4.1%) and Mozambique (3.8%).
Children under the age of five are most at risk from the disease.
In 2020, about 80% of all malaria deaths on the African continent occurred in this age group.
Records of the disease date back to antiquity, and its symptoms include heat, headache and muscle aches, followed by waves of cold, heat and sweating.
Five types of parasites cause malaria in humans, all transmitted through the bites of an infected female mosquito.
A parasite called Plasmodium falciparum causes the bulk of the deaths.
Several preventative treatments that can help reduce disease severity, avoid death and reduce transmission are available.
The World Health Organization says that the best treatment, especially for P. falciparum, is the artemisinin-based combination.
Preventive treatments are also highly recommended for pregnant women and infants living in high-risk areas and for travelers traveling to these areas, and insecticide-treated bed nets are considered an inexpensive and effective shield.
In October 2021, the World Health Organization recommended “widespread use” of the world’s first child malaria vaccine in sub-Saharan Africa after it conducted a review of a pilot program in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi.
Studies have shown that the RTS,S vaccine, manufactured by the British pharmaceutical giant Glaxo Smith Kline, has significantly reduced death among children due to infection with the most prevalent parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, in Africa.
More than one million children in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi have so far received at least one dose of the vaccine, the World Health Organization announced Thursday.
There are other vaccines on the table, including the Matrix-M vaccine developed by the British University of Oxford, which is the only one that has exceeded the 75% efficacy threshold set by the World Health Organization.
