By EUNICE KILONZO
Algeria is now the fourth African country after Lesotho, Mauritius and Seychelles to be declared malaria-free.
The announcement on May 22 by WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also listed Argentina as being malaria-free, making it the second country in the Americas to achieve that status.
Dr Ghebreyesus spoke on the sidelines of the 72nd session of the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland.
The certification is granted when a country proves that it has interrupted malaria transmission for at least three consecutive years within its borders.
In the past four years, Maldives (2015), Sri Lanka (2016), and Uzbekistan and Paraguay (2018) have also been declared malaria-free.
Dr Winnie Mpanju-Shumbusho, board chairperson of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership — the largest global platform for action towards a world free from malaria — termed Algeria’s case a “monumental achievement” for a disease that kills one child every two minutes.
Algeria and Argentina reported their last cases of indigenous malaria in 2013 and 2010 respectively. They managed to become malaria-free through a number of measures. One, over the past decade, they improved surveillance of the disease, rapidly identifying and treating any case. Second, both countries provided free diagnosis and treatment within their borders.
Algeria’s malaria-free certification comes at a time when a vaccine, known as RTS,S (which had been in development for 30 years), was launched in Malawi in April this year, in a landmark pilot programme. The pilot will also be rolled out in Ghana and Kenya and targets children up to two-years-old in the three countries…Read More>>
