The World Health Organisation WHO has declared the People’s Republic of China free of malaria after 70 years of efforts to banish the life-threatening disease caused by parasites which are transmitted through the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquito.
World Health Organisation WHO Director General Tedros Ashanom Ghebreyesus made this announcement as he officially granted the world’s most populous country a malaria-free certification as a token of celebration of the country’s successful elimination of the disease after 70 years of its struggles against malaria.
“Today we congratulate the people of China on ridding the country of malaria. Their successes were hard-earned and came only after decades of targeted and sustained action”, Tedros said. According to WHO, the East-Asian nation had from 30 million malaria cases in the 1940s, brought down the number over the last decades till it achieved no case in the last four years.
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China, where the deadly Coronavirus broke out from and the first case of COVID-19 was discovered had been making efforts against malaria in the 1950s as the disease was rampant in the southern part of the country. Having beaten the deadly disease which according to WHO, killed an estimate of 409, 000 in 2019, China has now become the 40th country to be declared malaria-free in the world.
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