Malaria burden of disease, Distribution of malaria vaccines
Global burden of disease
Yesterday, the World Health Organization (WHO) released the World malaria report 2024, an annual, vital tool to assess global progress and gaps in the fight against malaria.
Global health officials report an estimated 263 million cases, with an incidence of 60.4 cases per 1000 population at risk, and 597,000 malaria deaths (a slight decrease) worldwide in 2023. This represents about 11 million more cases in 2023 compared to 2022, and nearly the same number of deaths.
Approximately 95% of the deaths occurred in the WHO African Region, where many at risk still lack access to the services they need to prevent, detect and treat the disease.
The WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region experienced a 57% increase in incidence since 2021.
The top five countries carrying the heaviest estimated burden of malaria cases in 2023 were Nigeria (26%), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (13%), Uganda (5%), Ethiopia (4%) and Mozambique (4%).
WHO reports between 2000 and 2023, an estimated 2.2 billion malaria cases and 12.7 million malaria deaths were averted worldwide, with 1.7 billion cases and 12 million deaths prevented in the WHO African Region alone. In 2023 alone, more than 177 million cases and more than 1 million deaths were averted globally.
In 2023 and 2024, notable progress was made in malaria elimination. The number of malaria endemic countries decreased from 85 in 2022 to 83, as a result of Timor-Leste and Saudi Arabia maintaining zero indigenous cases for 3 consecutive years. Furthermore, by 2024, a total of 26 countries that were malaria endemic in 2000 successfully reported zero indigenous cases for 3 consecutive years.
In 2023, Azerbaijan, Belize, Cabo Verde and Tajikistan were certified malaria free. In 2024, Egypt also achieved malaria free status, marking it as the third country in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region to do so.
Malaria vaccines
According to WHO, seventeen countries in Africa, with roughly 70% of the global malaria burden, now offer malaria vaccines sub-nationally through their routine childhood immunization programmes. Since 2023, more than 12 million vaccine doses co-funded by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and countries, have been procured and delivered by UNICEF to these countries.
Fourteen of these countries introduced the vaccines for the first time in 2024, including Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Benin, Liberia, CĂ´te d’Ivoire, South Sudan, Mozambique, Central African Republic, Niger, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, and Nigeria. The vaccine rollout and continued scale-up in Africa is a critical step forward in the fight against one of the continent’s deadliest diseases.
The vaccines are expected to save tens of thousands of these young lives every year as they are scaled-up across high-burden countries.