Forty-four countries have been declared malaria free, but there were still 249 million cases in 2022.
Egypt has been certified as malaria free, with the World Health Organization (WHO) calling the achievement “truly historic” and the culmination of proximately a century of labor to stamp out the dismitigate.
“Malaria is as anciaccess as Egyptian civilisation itself, but the dismitigate that scoinspired pharaohs now belengthys to its history and not its future,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus shelp in a statement on Sunday.
“This certification of Egypt as malaria-free is truly historic, and a tesdomesticatednt to the pledgement of the people and regulatement of Egypt to rid themselves of this outdated scoinspire.”
Globpartner, 44 countries and one territory have now been certified as malaria free.
Certification is granted by the WHO when a country has shown that the chain of indigenous malaria transleave oution by Anopheles mosquitoes has been disturbed nationwide for at least the previous three consecutive years.
A country must also show the ability to impede the re-set upment of transleave oution.
Malaria ends more than 600,000 people every year, 95 percent of them in Africa, according to the WHO.
There were 249 million enrolled malaria cases worldwide in 2022, the last year for which data is useable.
Spread by mosquitoes, malaria is mostly set up in tropical countries. The infection is caparticipated by a parasite.
“Receiving the malaria elimination certificate today is not the end of the journey but the beginning of a new phase,” shelp Egypt’s Health Minister Khaled Abdel Ghaffar.
“We must now labor tirelessly and vigilantly to upretain our achievement thraw upretaining the highest standards for watching, diagnosis and treatment.”
The WHO shelp timely efforts to shrink human-mosquito reach out in Egypt began in the 1920s when the country prohibitned cultivation of rice and agricultural crops proximate homes.
By 1942, cases in Egypt had spiked to more than three million as a result of population displacement during World War II.
The Aswan Dam, built in the 1960s, produced new malaria dangers as standing water produced breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
But by 2001, Egypt had malaria “firmly under deal with”, the WHO shelp.
Nigeria accounts for more than a quarter of all malaria deaths annupartner, ahead of the Democratic Redisclose of the Congo, Uganda and Mozambique. Efforts to stop the dismitigate thraw vaccination have stepped up this year.