World Malaria Day 2015

World Malaria Day will be marked on 25 April 2015. The World Health Organization’s global campaign theme is “Invest in the future. Defeat malaria.”

World Malaria Day is an occasion to highlight the need for continued investment and sustained political commitment for malaria control and elimination. It is also an opportunity for new donors to join the global malaria fight, and for research and academic institutions to showcase their scientific work. For this year’s World Malaria Day, WHO will launch new malaria treatment guidelines and highlight its draft technical strategy for 2016-2030 which will be considered for adoption by the World Health Assembly in May 2015.

This reflects the ambitious goals and targets set out in a draft post-2015 strategy to be presented to the World Health Assembly in May. The new strategy aims to reduce malaria cases and deaths by 90% by 2030 from current levels. Four countries have been certified free of malaria in the last decade and the post-2015 strategy sets the goal of eliminating the disease from a further 35 countries by 2030.

While huge gains in the fight against malaria have been made in recent years, the disease still has a devastating impact on people’s health and livelihoods around the world, particularly in Africa, where it kills almost half a million children under 5 each year.

Effective tools to prevent and treat malaria already exist, but more funds are urgently required to make them available to the people who need them and to combat emerging drug and insecticide resistance.

World Malaria Day is a chance to highlight the advances that have already been made in malaria prevention and control, and to commit to continued investment and action to accelerate progress against this deadly disease.

Source: World Health Organization