Malaria deaths are more than previously estimated by World Health Organization; Research

Researchers have found that the number of deaths from malaria is double than that was previously estimated.

This research has been published online in the February 4 issue of the journal The Lancet.

Researchers have pointed out that almost 1.24 million people died from the disease in 2010. However, World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that 655,000 people died from malaria in 2010.

Researchers worked on new data and modeling techniques for the development of historical database for malaria between 1980 and 2010. They found that almost 995,000 million people died of malaria in 1980, which rose to its peak in 2004 i.e. 1.82 million deaths and again went down to 1.24 million deaths in 2010.

Researchers have also found that deaths from malaria increased from 493,000 in Africa in 1980 to 1.61 million in 2004 and then decreased by almost 30% to about 1.13 million in 2010.

According to experts, the decline in deaths due to malaria after 2004 is resulted from “a rapid scaling up of malaria control in Africa”, supported by international donors.

“We estimated that if decreases from the peak year of 2004 continue, malaria mortality will decrease to less than 100,000 deaths only after 2020,” Researchers write.

This research has been funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Reference:

Prof Christopher JL Murray MD, Lisa C Rosenfeld AB, Stephen S Lim PhD, Kathryn G Andrews AB, Kyle J Foreman MPH, Diana Haring BSc, Nancy Fullman MPH, Mohsen Naghavi MD, Prof Rafael Lozano MD, Prof Alan D Lopez PhD, (2012). Global malaria mortality between 1980 and 2010: a systematic analysis. The Lancet, doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(12)60034-8