They shall not pass (Image: Elmer Martinez/AFP/Getty)

Hurrah for bed nets, rapid diagnosis and drugs called artemisinins. Together, they have helped to halve the death rate from malaria between 2000 and 2013, saving an estimated 4.3 million lives.

This is according to the World Malaria Report 2014, released this week in London by the World Health Organization. Half a million people died from malaria in 2013 and there were 200 million cases globally.

“We have the right tools and our defences are working, but we still need to get those tools to a lot more people if we are to make these gains sustainable,” says Margaret Chan, the director-general of the WHO.


In sub-Saharan Africa, where 90 per cent of malaria deaths occur, new infections have fallen by 26 per cent from 173 million in 2000 to 128 million last year, despite a 43 per cent increase in population.

This is in part thanks to bed nets impregnated with insecticides that kill malaria-carrying mosquitoes. These insecticides can now work for up to five years, and half of the people at risk in the sub-Saharan region were using bed nets in 2013, up from just 3 per cent of people a decade ago.

Medical advances have played a role too. The use of rapid diagnostic tests has risen six-fold, and patients received almost 400 million courses of powerful artemisinin-based therapies last year, up from just 11 million in 2000.

But gaps and problems remain, says Pedro Alonso, the director of the WHO’s malaria programme. A third of households at risk from malaria in sub-Saharan Africa still don’t have bed nets, and fears remain that resistance to artemisinins that has emerged in five Asian countries may eventually engulf Africa.

The WHO says it still needs more than $2.5 billion to reach global malaria targets.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Malaria on the run”