The global fight against malaria has stalled and requires massive investment as well as political leadership, the UN health agency warned in a report published Friday.
"The world is at a crossroads. Historical progress that has been achieved over the last decade is clearly slowing down," Pedro Alonso, director of the World Health Organization's malaria programme, told a news conference in Geneva.
Alonso expressed deep concern as he highlighted that "we still have in excess of 400,000 deaths every year and 200 million cases." "Despite huge progress in reducing malaria cases and deaths between 2000 and 2015, the last two years have witnessed the stalling of global progress," the WHO report warned.
It said 2020 targets to cut incidence and mortality by 90 per cent by 2030 will likely be missed.
The WHO report predicts that even given its "most optimistic scenarios and projections ... we will still have 11 million cases in Africa in 2050."
Alonso underlined that the current vaccine is only 40 per cent effective. The WHO decried that "global funding for malaria has remained relatively stagnant since 2010."