World Malaria Day 25 April 2019

World Malaria Day is on 25 April this year. Each year World Malaria Day highlights the global efforts to control malaria. Invaluable progress has been made, saving millions of lives, however few significant gains were made in reducing malaria between 2015-2018.

The World Malaria Report 2018 documents that there was an estimated 219 million cases of malaria and 435,000 deaths from malaria worldwide in 2017, which remained virtually unchanged from the previous year.

This year’s theme is ‘Zero Malaria Starts with Me’ a grassroots campaign that aims to keep malaria high on the political agenda, mobilize additional resources, and empower communities to take ownership of malaria prevention and care.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and its partners call for greater investment in prevention, diagnosis and treatment of malaria and have set the following targets for 2020:

• elimination of malaria in at least 10 countries that were malaria endemic in 2015. 
• malaria mortality rates and incidence are reduced by at least 40% compared with
  2015.
• malaria does not re-emerge in countries that were malaria-free in 2015.

Information about malaria and its prevention can be found on the Travax malaria pages

Material to support World Malaria Day, including a social media toolkit, can be found on the RMB partnership website

Source: Travax, 27 March 2019, WHO, 2019, RMB Partnership, 2019