57 Percent of Africans Live in Malaria Risk Areas

About 57 percent of the population of Africa live in areas where the risk of malaria infection is moderate to high. This is despite "unprecedented investment" in malaria control over the past decade, according to a new study.

Despite the continued risk levels found throughout the continent, substantial reductions in malaria transmission have been achieved between 2000 and 2010. More than a quarter of the African population is living in areas with a much lower malaria risk than before.

In the study, published in The Lancet, researchers from the Kenya Medical Research Institute, University of Oxford and the World Health Organization's Regional Office for Africa complied data from the largest ever collection of 26,746 community-based surveys of parasite prevalence covering 3,575,418 individual observations from 44 malaria-endemic countries and territories in Africa since 1980, according to the press release.

After using geostatisitcs to estimate malaria prevalence, researchers found reductions in the prevalence of malaria among children in 40 of the 44 countries in Africa between 2000 and 2010. The year 2000 marks the launch of the Roll Back Malaria initiative.

Over the decade since the initiative, the population living in high-transmission areas fell 16 percent, from 218.6 million to 183.5 million. However, the population living in moderate to high-risk areas increased 57 percent, from 178.6 million to 280.1 million.

Encouraging data was also found. The population living in very low risk areas increased 64 percent, from 78.2 million to 128.2 million.

Robert Snow, a professor from the Kenya Medical Research Institute-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, said, "Almost all (87 percent) of those in the two highest endemicity classes are living in just 10 countries. Of these, three (Guinea, Mali, and Togo) are not part of the 10 countries that are the focus of the WHO Malaria Situation Room."

The authors noted that the high population growth rate has reduced some of the proportional gains seen in the data. Now, 200 million extra people live in malaria-endemic regions compared with 2000.

"In a period of global economic recession, these results emphasize the need for continued support for malaria control, not only to sustain the gains that have been made, but also to accelerate the reduction in transmission intensity where it still remains high. If investments in malaria are not sustained, hundreds of millions of Africans run the risk of rebound transmission, with catastrophic consequences," said Snow.