Celebrating World Malaria Day 2023 

Today is World Malaria Day, a milestone in the global malaria community. I would like to take this opportunity to celebrate the tremendous achievements made over several decades, especially within the last 20 years in the field of malaria elimination. However, World Malaria Day is also an important moment to draw attention to the urgent need for continued investment and innovation in malaria research.  

The burden of malaria is immense, with the WHO recording 619,000 deaths in their most recent World Malaria Report. The African region continues to shoulder the heaviest burden of malaria with 234 million cases and 593,000 deaths in 2021. 

Now is the time to take decisive action to deliver on our goal of zero malaria and achieve 2030 targets of reducing global malaria incidence and mortality rates by at least 90%.  The fight against malaria is one of humanity’s most significant public health successes.   

Great progress was made in malaria control over the last two decades, resulting in a reduction in overall cases and deaths. But after years of steady declines, malaria cases and deaths are on the rise.  Today, a child dies of malaria every minute.  

The malaria mosquito and parasite are continually adapting and evolving to become resistant to existing tools, and an arsenal of new innovations are essential to help beat this disease once and for all.  

This World Malaria Day, countries and partners must come together to urgently invest in programs, innovate to develop new tools and approaches and implement national strategies to accelerate progress against this age-old disease.  

For this year’s World Malaria Day, Target Malaria presents 44 scientists from across our project and partner institutions, as they share how Target Malaria is investing in new genetic technologies to find solutions to control malaria-transmitting mosquitoes.  

You can find more here >  

Together, we can end malaria!  

#WorldMalariaDay