World Malaria Day 2022: Every year on April 25, World Malaria Day is observed to highlight the need for continued investment and sustained political commitment to preventing and controlling malaria across the globe. The day is observed with a different meaningful theme, and this year the World Health Organization has marked World Malaria Day under the theme “Harness innovation to reduce the malaria disease burden and save lives.”
Since the beginning of this initiative, the global health body has continuously called for investments and innovations that will bring in new vector control approaches, diagnostics, antimalarial medicines, and other tools that will speed the pace of progress against malaria.
The day holds its significance, as despite being a treatable disease, Malaria continues to have a devastating impact on the livelihood of people across the planet. As per WHO, the year 2020 witnessed around 241 million new cases of malaria and 627,000 malaria-related fatalities in 85 nations. Not only this but in the African region, over two-thirds of the fatalities were reported among children below 5 years old. And this data proves that despite achieving steady advances in the global burden of malaria from 2000 to 2015, recent years have reported slow progress, especially in high burden countries of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Diving deep into the history of World Malaria Day, in 2007 the WHO generated the idea from Africa Malaria Day, which is an event that the African government has been observing against the disease since 2001. At the 60th session of the World Health Assembly, which was sponsored by WHO, it was proposed that Africa Malaria day be changed to World Malaria Day.
This was done to bring greater awareness to the global fight and to recognise the existence of malaria across the globe. For those who don’t know, the deadly disease is transmitted via the bite of female Anopheles mosquitoes that are infected by the plasmodium parasite. And when a mosquito bites a human, a parasite is released into the bloodstream, resulting in malaria.