The World Health Organisation says the number of people killed by malaria has been reduced by nearly half in Africa in spite of less funding.
WHO stated this in its report titled: “World Malaria Report 2013” released in New York made available to North American Correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria on Wednesday.
The report stated that malaria was slightly higher globally and that sustained funding was needed to lower the numbers even more.
“This remarkable progress is no cause for complacency: absolute numbers of malaria cases and deaths are not going down as fast as they could,” the report quoted the WHO Director-General, Margaret Chan, as saying.
Chan: “Global efforts to control and eliminate malaria reduced mortality by 45 per cent worldwide and 49 per cent in Africa.
“That is the equivalent of 3.3 million lives saved between 2000 and 2012, the large majority in the 10 countries with the highest malaria burden, and among the most affected age groups – children five years old and younger.”
In spite of the progress, figures show that universal access to prevention and treatment is still a long way off.
It noted that an estimated 207 million cases of malaria were reported last year resulting in 627,000 deaths.
“The fact that so many people are infected and dying from mosquito bites is one of the greatest tragedies of the 21st century,” the report also quoted Chan as saying.
It said that interventions to control mosquitoes are slowing down, noting that access to insecticide-treated bed nets was down for a second successive year due to a lack of funding.
“An estimated 3.4 billion people are at risk for malaria, mostly in Africa where 80 per cent of the cases occur, and South-East Asia,” the report published the agency on Wednesday said.
“To win the fight against malaria, we must get the means to prevent and treat the disease to every family who needs it,” the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Financing the Health MDGs and for Malaria, Raymond Chambers, said.
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