Malaria cases surged to 263 million last year amid stalled progress to stop mosquito-borne illness

The number of malaria cases worldwide reached 263 million last year, an increase of 11 million cases from 2022 amid stalled progress to eliminate the mosquito-borne illness, according to a new report.

While an estimated 2.2 billion malaria cases and 12.7 million deaths have been averted since 2000 due to global health efforts, in recent years a lack of funding, the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on health systems, political instability in countries battling malaria, and other challenges have all stymied the response.

“We are here because of the substantial progress that has been made,” Dr James Tibenderana, an epidemiologist and chief executive of the UK-based Malaria Consortium, told Euronews Health.

In 2023, Azerbaijan, Belize, Cape Verde, and Tajikistan were all certified malaria-free, while Egypt gained the designation this year and Georgia and Turkey appear close behind.

Still, an estimated 597,000 people died from malaria in 2023, a level that was on par with the year before, according to the report from the World Health Organization (WHO). Nearly all of the deaths were in Africa.

“The rest of this journey is more complicated than we have seen in the past 20 years,” Tibenderana said.

That’s because malaria, which is still endemic in 83 countries, spreads to people through mosquitoes infected with a parasite, making it more complex to eliminate than other diseases that spread between people.

In 2023, global funding for malaria control was $4 billion (€3.79 billion), less than half of the $8.3 billion (€7.87 billion) that the UN health agency says is needed. That gap is leading to shortages of medicines and insecticide-treated nets to protect against mosquitoes, the report found.

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