According to the World Malaria Report 2012 published by the World Health Organization (WHO), there are only three countries in the world where the number of cases of malaria has increased over the last decade and they are Guyana, Dominican Republic and Venezuela.
Richard Cibulskis, Coordinator for Strategy, Economy and Elimination of the WHO Global Malaria Program, speaking at a press conference said that there could be various reasons for the increase, one of which is that the governments are not implementing measures to control the disease.
As far as the Dominican Republic was concerned, Cibulskis said that one of the possible causes could be the proximity to Haiti combined with the level of imports from the neighboring country. He also said that there is also a possibility that the number of cases had not actually increased in the three named countries, but that the resources to detect cases had increased.
Looking at the details Guyana went from 22,681 cases in 1990 to 29,471 in 2011, the Dominican Republic went from 356 cases in 1990 to 1,616 in 2011, and Venezuela, from 21,416 in 1992 to 45,824 in 2011.
There was also an increase in the number of cases of malaria in Haiti from 4,806 in 1990 to 32,048 in 201, but due to the inconsistency of the data across the decade it was impossible to identify why there had been an increase. It appears that there was an increase of 80,000 cases due to the earthquake but that then fell to 32,000 the subsequent year.
Nevertheless there is positive news across the Americas region as a whole, as whilst there are 21 countries where there is malaria, thirteen of them have reduced the number of cases by 75% between 2010 and 2011.
The countries are Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guyana, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Suriname.
In addition, another three, Colombia, Panama and Peru have reduced the incidence of malaria by 64%.
In general across the continent, the number of cases of malaria have reduced by half, from more than a million in 1990 to less than 500,000 now and the number of deaths from 439 to 113 in 2011.
www.listindiario.com/la-republica/2012/12/17/259059/RD-entre-los-tres-unicos-paises-en-el-mundo-que-sube-incidencia-de-malaria