The Comoros on the verge of completely eradicating malaria

The Comoros is on the verge of eradicating the malaria epidemic across the entire archipelago.

Thanks to two successive campaigns launched in 2005 and 2010 on the three islands, the number of malaria cases has dropped from 54,078 in 2004 to 1,052 in 2015, a fall that is well over 98%.

And since 2014, the hospital mortality rate due to malaria is dropped to nearly 0%.

Dr Afane, coordinator of the malaria control program in Comoros said: “Our goal is to break the chain of transmission. Now we have been able to break it in Anjouan, there haven’t been any cases since 2014, same as Moheli. It’s only now in Ngazidja where we have some few cases, and where we want to strengthen surveillance like in the other two islands. We also want strengthen the control in Ngazidja so that we can break this chain of transmission before the promised deadline in 2020.”

What’s remaining now is the formalization of the country’s victory over the disease by obtaining a WHO certification. According to the World Health Organization, 214 million cases of malaria were recorded worldwide in 2015, with 438,000 deaths, most of which occured in Africa.