Malaria mortality has fallen back to levels seen before the Covid-19 crisis, the WHO said Wednesday, but called for faster progress against the disease that killed nearly some 597,000 people last year.
In a new report, the World Health Organization estimated that there were 263 million cases of malaria worldwide in 2023 — 11 million more than a year earlier — while the death toll remained relatively stable.
But in terms of the mortality rate, “we have come back to pre-pandemic numbers”, Arnaud Le Menach, of the WHO’s Global Malaria Programme, told reporters.
In 2020, disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic led to a sharp increase in malaria-related mortality, with an additional 55,000 deaths counted that year.
Since then the total number of deaths from malaria, which is caused by a mosquito-borne parasite, has gradually shrunk, as has the mortality rate.
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