Progress Has Been Made In Containing Malaria, More Needs To Be Done

April 24, 2013

Malaria once afflicted people in nearly every country on the planet. Insecticides and eradication campaigns over the past century have contained this mosquito-borne parasitic disease to fewer than 100 countries. Yet in those mainly tropical countries where malaria is still prevalent, it kills more than 650,000 people each year, most of them children.

For every minute that goes by, a child under five years of age dies of malaria.

Malaria has been diagnosed on every continent, but sub-Saharan Africa is the region most afflicted. Dr. Anthony Fauci, who heads malaria research at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, calls the parasitic disease one of the world's worst killers.

"We’ve made substantial progress in a global community way with malaria because there are several countries that predict that by 2015 they will have substantially -- by more than 50 percent and up to 75 percent -- decreased the incidents of malaria. Having said that as the good news, the sobering news is that we still have 660,000 deaths per year from malaria," Fauci said.

Multiple strategies have been used to fight malaria. Bed nets treated with insecticide protect against mosquito bites. Those infected are treated with drugs early before their disease turns deadly. Pesticides are sprayed to control mosquito populations.