Europe becomes world’s first region to end malaria: WHO

The World Health Organization (WHO) on 20 April 2016 announced that the European Region became the first in the world to have achieved interruption of indigenous malaria transmission. The number of indigenous malaria cases in the region dropped from 90712 in 1995 to zero cases in 2015.
Besides, WHO announced that the European Region hit its 2015 target to wipe out malaria, thus contributing to the global goal to End malaria for good.
• The number of malaria cases globally fell from an estimated 262 million in 2000 to 214 million in 2015, a decline of 18%.
• The number of malaria deaths globally fell from an estimated 839000 in 2000 to 438 000 in 2015, a decline of 48%.
• The number of malaria deaths in children aged under 5 years is estimated to have decreased from 723000 globally in 2000.
• The proportion of children infected with malaria parasites has halved in endemic areas of Africa since 2000. Infection prevalence among children aged 2–10 years is estimated to have declined from 33% in 2000 to 16% in 2015, with three quarters of this change occurring after 2005.
• It is estimated that a cumulative 1.2 billion fewer malaria cases and 6.2 million fewer malaria deaths occurred globally between 2001 and 2015 than would have been the case had incidence and mortality rates remained unchanged since 2000.
• The WHO European Region reported zero indigenous cases for the first time in 2015, in line with the goal of the Tashkent Declaration to eliminate malaria from the region by 2015.