Malaria deaths rose in 2024, funding cuts risk surge, WHO says
By Jennifer Rigby
LONDON, Dec 4 (Reuters) – Malaria will kill around 610,000 people in 2024, mostly young children in sub-Saharan Africa, the World Health Organization said on Thursday, warning of risks from increasing drug resistance, climate change and budget cuts.
The toll “increased slightly compared to the number of deaths in 2023, and the number of cases also increased, from 273 million” to around 282 million, according to the WHO’s annual malaria report.
After vast progress in the early 2000s, the fight against malaria has stalled over the past decade. While 47 countries have been certified malaria-free, others are seeing an increase in cases – in 2024, including Ethiopia, Madagascarand Yemen.
RISK OF RESURGENCE
“Too many people are still dying from a preventable and treatable disease,” said Daniel Ngamije Madandi, director of WHO’s global malaria programme.
He said growing resistance to malaria drugs and insecticides used on some bed nets, as well as climate change and conflict, were all factors hampering the response to the disease, which is spread by mosquitoes.
The increase in cases and deaths is partly linked to population growth, but the incidence of cases – which is the cause – has also increased “during the period 2015-2024, WHO said, from 59 to 64 cases per 100,000 people at risk. Mortality rates declined, but only slightly, from 14.9 to 13.8 per 100,000 people at risk.
Funding is also consistently below what is needed, WHO said. By 2024, total investment in the fight against malaria, from both donors and affected countries, reached $3.9 billion, well below the target of more than $9 billion.
That total, along with data on cases and deaths from last year, does not yet account for this year’s reductions in international aid, which began in January in the United States and have impacted the fight against malaria this year.
“The underfinancing of [the] The response to malaria… carries a clear risk, that of a massive and uncontrolled resurgence of the disease,” Ngamije said.
He said new and better tools, including malaria treatments, diagnostics and vaccines, offered hope and had saved millions of lives. But they must reach those at risk to have an impact, he added, “a responsibility that falls on the governments of affected countries as well as” international donors.
(Reporting by Jennifer Rigby, editing by Frances Kerry)
