Death toll from malaria to exceed COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa: WHO

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – Malaria deaths from disruptions during the coronavirus pandemic in services designed to tackle mosquito-borne disease will far exceed those killed by COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa, warned Monday the World Health Organization.

More than 409,000 people worldwide – most of them babies in the poorest parts of Africa – were killed by malaria last year, the WHO said in its latest Global Malaria Report, and COVID-19 will almost certainly increase that toll in 2020.

“Our estimates are that depending on the level of disruption in services (due to COVID-19) … there could be an excess of malaria deaths between 20,000 and 100,000 in sub-Saharan Africa, most of them in young children, “Pedro Alsonso, director of the WHO antimalarial program, told reporters.

“It is very likely that the excess mortality from malaria is greater than the direct mortality from COVID.”

The WHO report found that there were 229 million cases of malaria worldwide in 2019, and said that despite the unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries around the world have struggled fiercely and maintained the line against disease.

But “long-term success in achieving a malaria-free world within a generation is far from assured,” he said. Some of the African countries most affected by malaria have struggled to make significant progress since 2016.

Due to the continued transmission of malaria by mosquitoes in many parts of the world, half of the world’s population is at risk of contracting the disease – and it still kills a child every two minutes. Despite this, global attention and funding has been diverted, making preventable child deaths more likely.

Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said the WHO report’s findings were “extremely timely”.

“The world of global health, the media and politics are all riddled with COVID, … and yet we are paying very little attention to a disease that still kills over 400,000 people each year, mostly children,” he told reporters on the record.

“And to remind you, it’s a disease we know how to get rid of – so it’s a choice we don’t make.”

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)