Guterres: Rolling back malaria is possible with strong political commitment and adequate investment

Geneva - Sana

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, confirmed that despite the Covid 19 pandemic and the multiple crises it has caused around the world, the number of countries that have managed to eliminate malaria is increasing.

"The achievement of many countries' ambitious goal of eliminating malaria shows the world that achieving a malaria-free future is within reach," the United Nations News Center quoted Guterres as saying in a message on the occasion of World Malaria Day.

Guterres indicated that in countries where there are no cases of malaria, prevention and treatment services are provided to all people at risk of infection, stressing that it is possible to defeat malaria through strong political commitment, adequate investment and the appropriate mix of strategies, thus achieving the common goal of creating a world. Malaria free.

For his part, Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that “the burden of malaria that many countries carry at one time is very heavy. all countries".

On World Malaria Day, the World Health Organization announced that out of 87 countries with malaria cases, 46 countries reported fewer than 10,000 cases of the disease in 2019 compared to a total of 26 countries in 2000.

By the end of 2020, 24 countries had reported stopping malaria transmission in three years or more, and WHO had certified 11 countries free of malaria.

Annually, malaria kills more than 400,000 people, most of them young children, in Africa, and there are more than 200 million new cases of this deadly parasitic disease every year.