Malaria deaths fall worldwide, but still high in India
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There has been over 20 per cent decline in the number of deaths from malaria worldwide in the past decade, but the mosquito-borne disease continued to haunt India with the country witnessing over 1,100 deaths in 2009 after a steady decline since 2006.
According to the 'World Malaria Report 2010' by the World Health Organisation (WHO), malaria killed 1,133 people in 2009 in India which reported over 1.5 million cases that year.
Although the number of confirmed cases in the country has remained stable since 2007, the number of deaths has gone up in 2009 after a steady decline since 2006. In 2000, there were only 892 malaria deaths, which rose to 1,708 in 2006, it said. However, the report showed that there has been a 23 per cent decline in the number of confirmed cases in India from 2000 to 2009.
While the country recorded a whopping 2,031,790 malaria cases in 2000, it declined to 1,563,344 cases in 2009. Around the world, the WHO report said, there has been over 20 per cent decline in the number of deaths from the parasitic disease which is present in 90 countries and infects one in 10 people, mainly living in Africa, India, Brazil, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Colombia and the Solomon Islands.
The disease killed 781,000 people in 2009 worldwide out of 225 million cases, compared to 233 million cases and 985,000 deaths in 2000. The mosquito-borne disease, according to the report, is most prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, where 85 per cent of deaths occurred, most of them children under five.
While progress in reducing the malaria burden has been remarkable, there was evidence of an increase in malaria cases in 3 countries in 2009 (Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, and Zambia).
The reasons for the resurgences are not known with certainty, the report said. "The increases in malaria cases highlight the fragility of malaria control and the need to maintain control programmes even if numbers of cases have been reduced substantially," it said.
However, the report claimed that the disease has been eradicated from three countries since 2007
- Morocco, Turkmenistan and Armenia. Robert Newman, director of the WHO's Global Malaria Programme, described the progress as 'remarkable'.
"Better diagnostic testing and surveillance has provided a clearer picture of where we are on the ground - and has shown that there are countries eliminating malaria in all endemic regions of the world," he told an international Malaria Forum conference in Seattle.
"We know that we can save lives with today's tools."
A global malaria eradication campaign, launched by WHO in 1955, succeeded in eliminating the disease in 16 countries and territories. Eight more nations were declared malaria-free up until 1987, when certification was abandoned for 20 years.
The Roll Back Malaria Partnership aims to eliminate malaria in another eight to 10 countries by the end of 2015, including the entire WHO European Region.
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