How china eradicated malaria
In 2010, the Chinese government committed to eliminating locally transmitted malaria within a decade. Following a 70-year effort, China has been awarded a malaria-free certification from WHO – a notable feat for a country that reported 30 million cases of the disease annually in the 1940s.
“Today we congratulate the people of China on ridding the country of malaria,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “Their success was hard-earned and came only after decades of targeted and sustained action. With this announcement, China joins the growing number of countries that are showing the world that a malaria-free future is a viable goal.”
China is the first country in the WHO Western Pacific Region to be awarded a malaria-free certification in more than 3 decades. Other countries in the region that have achieved this status include Australia (1981), Singapore (1982) and Brunei Darussalam (1987).
How did China eliminate malaria
The Chinese government made malaria elimination a national priority under the 2010 National Malaria Elimination Action Plan. Most notably, it pioneered a method known as “1-3-7,” which shortened the amount of time it takes for local health authorities to report malaria cases and begin to test others for exposure to the Plasmodium parasite. And in 2015 a Chinese scientist, Tu Youyou, was awarded a Nobel prize for her discovery in the 1970s of the anti-malaria drug artemisinin.
However China, like other countries, is vulnerable to a reemergence of malaria. It borders three countries where malaria is endemic (Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam), and there is a risk that Chinese workers returning from Africa could bring the disease back with them. To keep its malaria-free status, China will have to submit a report to the WHO every year to prove that indigenous cases of malaria haven’t re-emerged.
Is there a vaccine for malaria?
A malaria vaccine has taken much longer to come to fruition because there are thousands of genes in malaria compared to around a dozen in coronavirus, and a very high immune response is needed to fight off the disease.
That said, there is no malaria vaccine licensed for use in the general public. But there is a vaccine—RTS,S—developed by British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to target a specific type of the parasite that causes malaria—it is the most prevalent in Africa, and the most deadly malaria parasite in the world
The vaccine is being rolled out in areas of Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi, and data from those trials will help determine whether the WHO will recommend it for broader use in children across Africa.
According to the WHO, RTS,s prevented approximately four in 10 cases of malaria in children who received four doses of it over four years. So even if the vaccine receives broad market authorization, it would complement existing therapies and preventative measures, like sleeping under an insecticide-treated mosquito net.
The university of oxford malaria vaccine has proved to be 77% effective in early trials and could be a major breakthrough against the disease
The most effective malaria vaccine to date had only shown 55% efficacy in trials on African children
What other countries are malaria free?
The WHO has certified 100 countries or territories as malaria-free, but only 40 of those eliminated the disease through specific public health measures; the rest are places “where malaria never existed or disappeared without specific measures.”