Every year on April 25, the world acknowledges a disease that most people in wealthy countries have almost entirely forgotten about — and that kills a child in Africa roughly every two minutes.
The World Malaria Day 2026.
The World Health Organisation, alongside global health partners, has launched this year's campaign with a clear rallying call: "Driven to End Malaria: Now We Can. Now We Must."
The timing of that message is deliberate. The science to end malaria has never been stronger. Vaccines are being rolled out. New nets are working better. Diagnostic tools are improving. And yet — the numbers from 2024 show that the disease is not declining. It is slightly increasing. Progress made over two decades is at risk of being undone.
This is that story.
Since 2000, over 2.3 billion cases and 14 million deaths have been recorded till date. 47 countries till now have been free from malariya, while 37 countries have reported less than 1000 cases in 2024.
What Is Malaria? The Basic Biology
Malaria is caused by a parasite called Plasmodium. There are five species that infect humans, but P. falciparum and P. vivax cause the most disease. P. falciparum is the most deadly.
The parasite is transmitted by the bite of an infected Anopheles mosquito. The female mosquito bites — usually at night — and injects the parasite into the bloodstream. From there, the parasite travels to the liver, multiplies, and then re-enters the bloodstream, attacking red blood cells.
Symptoms appear 10 to 15 days after the infective bite, usually including:
- High fever, often cyclical (every 24, 48, or 72 hours depending on species)
- Chills and shivering
- Severe headache
- Muscle pain
- Nausea and vomiting
- Fatigue
If untreated, P. falciparum malaria can cause cerebral malaria — where the parasite affects the brain — and can be fatal within 24 hours of symptoms appearing. Children under 5 and pregnant women face the highest risk.
Also Read: Measles Is Not a Historical Disease. In 2026, It Is Actively Circulating in India!
The Scale of the Problem in 2024
The WHO's World Malaria Report 2025 (covering 2024 data) contained numbers that stopped global health officials cold:
- 282 million estimated malaria cases in 2024 — a slight increase from 2023.
- 610,000 deaths — also slightly up from 2023.
- Africa bears the overwhelming burden — 94% of cases and 95% of deaths occur on the continent.
- Children under 5 account for the majority of malaria deaths.
Between 2000 and 2024, progress had been real. The number of malaria-endemic countries dropped from 108 to 80. The global case count fell significantly through to around 2015, then stalled. Deaths declined substantially. Two specific years — 2020 and 2021 — saw sharp increases linked to COVID-19 disrupting health services. Since then, the trajectory has been worryingly flat.
The 2024 increase, however small, matters because it suggests the momentum of progress has not returned after the pandemic disruption.
Also Read: Type 5 Diabetes: What It Is, Causes, Symptoms, and Treatment Explained
The Progress: Two Decades of Gains Worth Protecting
Before discussing what's going wrong, the gains deserve their due.
Since 2000, according to WHO data:
- 2.3 billion malaria cases have been averted.
- 14 million deaths have been prevented.
- 47 countries have been certified malaria-free (two in 2024, three in 2025).
- 37 countries reported fewer than 1,000 indigenous cases in 2024.
Those numbers represent real lives. They represent the success of mosquito nets, indoor spraying, rapid diagnostic tests, and artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) — the current gold standard treatment.
The Vaccine Breakthrough: A Historic First
The single most significant development in malaria control in the past decade is the rollout of malaria vaccines.
The RTS,S vaccine (brand name Mosquirix), developed by GlaxoSmithKline after 30 years of research, was the first to receive WHO recommendation, in 2021. It does not offer complete protection — efficacy is around 30-40% against severe malaria — but in combination with other interventions, it reduces child mortality.
A second vaccine — the R21/Matrix-M vaccine, developed by the University of Oxford and the Serum Institute of India — has shown higher efficacy (up to 77% in early trials) and is now in rollout.
As of 2026, vaccines are being deployed in 25 countries, reaching an estimated 10 million children per year. Sudan became the first country in the Eastern Mediterranean region to introduce the vaccine in late 2024.
WHO's Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus captured the moment: "For centuries, malaria has stolen children from their parents, and health, wealth and hope from communities. But today, the story is changing. New vaccines, diagnostic tools, next-generation mosquito nets and effective medicines, including those adapted for the youngest, are helping to turn the tide."
The New Tools: What's Working Better Than Before
Next-generation mosquito nets. Standard insecticide-treated nets use pyrethroids. The problem: mosquitoes have become resistant to pyrethroids in 48 of 53 reporting countries. New PBO nets and dual active ingredient nets work against resistant mosquitoes. In 2024, 84% of nets shipped to Africa were these newer, more effective types. In 2019, that figure was just 10%.
Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention (SMC). Children in high-transmission areas are given preventive antimalarial drugs during peak transmission seasons. SMC now reaches 54 million children — a major scaling of a proven intervention.
New treatments for infants. In a significant step just announced on World Malaria Day 2026, the WHO has prequalified the first antimalarial treatment designed specifically for newborns and young infants weighing 2 to 5 kilograms. This is artemether-lumefantrine — an existing drug, but newly formulated for the youngest patients. Until now, infants have been treated with formulations meant for older children, increasing the risk of dosing errors. This new formulation closes a dangerous gap for approximately 30 million babies born in malaria-endemic regions each year.
The Threats: What's Going Wrong
Despite the progress, three major threats are putting the gains at risk.
Drug Resistance
Artemisinin partial resistance — resistance to the backbone of current malaria treatment — has been confirmed in four African countries: Eritrea, Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania. It is spreading. This is not a distant warning. It is happening now.
Artemisinin was the drug that transformed malaria treatment from the 1990s onward, dramatically cutting death rates. If resistance spreads widely across Africa, the consequences for child mortality would be catastrophic. New treatments are in development, but none are yet ready at scale.
Insecticide Resistance
Resistance to pyrethroids — the main insecticide used on bed nets — is now confirmed in 48 of 53 reporting countries. This is why the shift to PBO and dual-ingredient nets matters so urgently. If the world had continued relying on standard nets, the resistance problem would have been even worse by now.
Funding Cuts
This may be the most acute short-term threat. Global health aid has been cut significantly in recent months, including reductions in US government global health funding. These cuts have disrupted health systems, surveillance capacity, and community-level campaigns in multiple African countries.
The WHO notes that malaria funding globally fell 27% between 2015 and 2024 — from $152 million to $111 million in the Eastern Mediterranean region alone. Domestic funding share dropped from 36% to 21%.
The global funding gap to meet malaria elimination targets is estimated at $45 billion over the next several years. Without sustained investment, the disease will not decline. It will come back harder.
The Diagnostic Problem: False-Negative Tests
A specific and underappreciated technical problem has emerged: some strains of P. falciparum in 46 countries have lost the gene that produces a protein called HRP2 — the protein that most rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) are designed to detect.
The result: parasites that are "invisible" to the most common tests. A child with malaria tests negative, doesn't receive treatment, and worsens. The WHO now recommends that countries switch to alternative RDTs that target a different protein (pf-LDH) when more than 5% of cases are being missed by HRP2-based tests.
On April 14, 2026, the WHO prequalified three new rapid diagnostic tests designed to address this problem.
India and Malaria: The Domestic Picture
India has made substantial progress. The country's malaria burden has fallen dramatically since the early 2000s — from tens of millions of cases to a few hundred thousand annually. The National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme has been the backbone of this effort.
Key facts for India in recent years:
- Odisha, historically India's highest-malaria-burden state, has seen dramatic reductions through intensive net distribution, IRS (indoor residual spraying), and improved access to diagnosis and treatment.
- India has an ambitious goal of malaria elimination by 2030 — though that target is considered optimistic by some epidemiologists given the persistence of transmission in tribal and forested areas.
- The R21 vaccine, co-developed by the Serum Institute of India, represents India's direct scientific contribution to the global malaria fight.
India also faces the P. vivax challenge. While P. falciparum gets most of the attention (it kills faster), P. vivax has a dormant liver stage that can reactivate months or years later, making elimination more complicated.
Climate Change: The Factor Nobody Wants to Talk About
Malaria mosquitoes are cold-blooded. Their range and behaviour are strongly influenced by temperature and rainfall patterns.
As global temperatures rise:
- Highland areas of Africa and Asia that were previously too cold for Anopheles mosquitoes are becoming hospitable. New populations are being exposed to malaria for the first time.
- Heavier and more unpredictable rainfall creates more standing water — more breeding sites.
- Pakistan's massive malaria resurgence in 2022-2023, following catastrophic flooding, demonstrated exactly how climate events can cause explosive malaria outbreaks in a very short time.
Climate change is not a future risk for malaria. It is a present reality already showing up in case data.
The 2026 Message: Now We Can. Now We Must.
The WHO's campaign this year is unusually direct for a global health initiative. It's not saying "progress is happening." It's saying: we have the tools, we have the science, we have the evidence — what we need is the political will and the money to follow through.
The specific asks are clear:
- Fund the vaccine rollout to more countries.
- Scale up next-generation nets to replace standard pyrethroid nets.
- Expand seasonal chemoprevention to reach more of the 54 million children currently not covered.
- Invest in research for new treatments as resistance spreads.
- Do not cut global health aid at this moment. Every cut reverses years of progress.
What Ending Malaria Would Mean
For a moment, consider what malaria elimination would look like economically and socially — not just medically.
Malaria is not just a disease of bodies. It is a disease of economies. Countries with high malaria burden lose significant GDP each year to direct medical costs, lost productivity, and the compounding disadvantage of children missing school while sick.
Some estimates suggest African economies would be 1.3% larger per year without malaria. That compounds over decades. Communities where malaria has been controlled show improvements in school attendance, agricultural productivity, and maternal health outcomes.
The 47 countries that have already been certified malaria-free know this story. For most of them, the elimination of malaria was a stepping stone to broader development.
Summing it Up
Malaria has been killing humans for at least 50,000 years. It may have been responsible for more deaths in human history than any other disease.
And in 2026, for the first time, the WHO says that ending it in our lifetime is "no longer a dream — it is a real possibility."
That possibility has conditions attached. It requires money. It requires sustained political attention. It requires that wealthier countries remember that what happens to children in the Congo Basin or the Sahel is not somebody else's problem.
The disease does not respect borders. The mosquito certainly doesn't.
To read more such Bharat Explainer, click here.
About us:
News4Bharat is one of India’s fastest-growing digital news platforms, delivering timely updates and in-depth coverage across economy, policy, infrastructure, and national developments. Visit our homepage for more latest news and insights.
FAQs
Q: What is the theme of World Malaria Day 2026? A: "Driven to End Malaria: Now We Can. Now We Must." — a campaign launched by the WHO and partners.
Q: How many people died of malaria in 2024? A: An estimated 610,000 people — a slight increase from 2023, according to the WHO's World Malaria Report 2025.
Q: Is there a malaria vaccine available in 2026? A: Yes. Two vaccines — RTS,S (Mosquirix) and R21/Matrix-M — are being rolled out in 25 countries, reaching approximately 10 million children per year.
Q: What is artemisinin resistance and how serious is it? A: Artemisinin partial resistance — resistance to the main malaria treatment — has been confirmed in four African countries (Eritrea, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania) and is spreading. This is a critical threat to current treatment effectiveness.
Q: Is India malaria-free? A: No, but India has made major progress. India aims for malaria elimination by 2030. The burden has fallen sharply from tens of millions of cases to a few hundred thousand annually.
Q: How does climate change affect malaria? A: Rising temperatures expand the geographic range of Anophelesmosquitoes into higher altitudes. Heavier rainfall creates more breeding sites. Pakistan's 2022-23 flooding caused a massive malaria resurgence directly linked to climate events.