Bukola Adebayo
The World Health Organisation has declared Europe as the first region to report zero cases of malaria infection in the last one year.
According to the global health authority on Thursday, the number of indigenous malaria cases went down from 90,712 in 1995 to zero in 2015 on the continent.
The European region covers 53 countries with a population of about 900 million, including Russia and the former Soviet republics.
The WHO Regional Director for Europe, Dr. Zsuzsanna Jakab, described the feat as a milestone for any region of the world.
Jakab attributed the achievement to the “strong political commitment” on the part of European leaders with WHO support.
He said,“This is a milestone in Europe’s public health history and in the efforts to eliminate malaria globally. Until malaria is eradicated globally, people travelling to and from malaria-endemic countries can import the disease to Europe, and we have to keep up the good work to prevent its reintroduction,”
Last year, there were 214 million cases of the disease, and it killed 438,000 people, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
In 1975, Europe was declared malaria free, but the disease later re-emerged in the Caucasus, Central Asian republics, the Russian Federation and Turkey.
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