World Malaria Day 2022: All About Life-Threatening Disease
- Vipin Kumar
- April 25, 2022
- News
World Malaria Day 2022: Every year, 25 April is observed as the world malaria day to highlight the need for the prevention and control of the life-threatening disease. Malaria is the deadliest disease, which is caused by a parasite that is transmitted to humans through certain types of mosquitoes. When female antelopes bite a human, they inject the plasmodium parasite into the blood, which infects him.
However, this disease is treatable and preventable. As per a report by the World Health Organization, there were 24o million malaria cases in 2020 worldwide. In addition, this disease also claims the lives of 6.27 lakh people all over the globe in 2020.
Although, some countries have been able to eliminate Malaria successfully. The World Health Organisation (WHO) granted a malaria-free certificate to 40 countries and territories globally. WHO declared that China is the latest malaria-free country Other countries to join the malaria-free club are El Salvador (2021), Argentina (2019), Paraguay (2018), and Uzbekistan (2018).
In case of India, no state has been able to eliminate malaria completely. In 2019, India reported 88% of malaria cases and 86% of deaths due to malaria in the WHO Southeast Asia region. It is the only country outside Africa among the 11 ‘high burden to high impact’ counties.
India is on the way to reaching zero malaria cases by 2030. The National Framework for Malaria Elimination (NFME) has been trying to achieve this goal. By taking measures, India can reduce the number of malaria cases by 60% compared to 2017 and recorded a 46% reduction compared to 2018. Odisha is only the state in India that has been moving closer to achieving this malaria-free goal.