The WHO has made official that Argentina is a country without malaria | Chronic

The World Health Organization (WHO) officially announced Wednesday in Argentina a country free of malaria, also called malaria, not detected in recent years in its territory by cases of infection.

This announcement was made during the current World Health Assembly, to be held until the next day 29 in Geneva, and will make Argentina the second country in Latin America to get this certification in 45 years after Paraguay. I will arrive in June of last year.

In early May, Argentina received case certification following an badessment process in which it demonstrated the absence of indigenous malaria cases since 2011.

"The certification is the result of a very hard work in which took place the training and recycling of all addresses of epidemiology and all laboratories of the provinces"said at the time the secretary of the government of health, Adolfo Rubinstein.

Algeria has also been recognized as the first country in mainland Africa to eradicate malaria, which affects more than 200 million people each year and causes nearly 400,000 deaths, 60% of them in children under 5 years of age. five years.

WHO requires at least three years in the absence of local malaria cases to declare an area free from the disease. In Argentina, the last case reported was in 2010 and in Algeria in 2013. In both countries "Malaria has centuries of history and the fight against the disease has been hard"The WHO said in a statement quoted by the EFE agency that it had emphasized that improving the mechanisms of control, diagnosis and treatment over the last decade had been essential in both cases.

Algeria was the first country in the world where the parasite at the origin of this disease was identified, thanks to the research of the French doctor in 1880 Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran, who received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1907 for this advance.

Argentina launched its malaria eradication programs in the 1970s, during which collaboration with countries such as Bolivia to prevent contagion in border areas was paramount. Anopheles mosquitoes, malaria or malaria, are one of the most harmful diseases for humans as they are endemic in more than 80 countries representing 40% of the world population.