According to the annual malaria report from the World Health Organization (WHO), out of all of the regions in the world, the Americas is the one with the highest increase in deaths from malaria in 2017. Six regional countries, nevertheless, showed a decrease of over 20% from the previous year, including the Dominican Republic. Other regional countries posting declining malaria statistics were El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Surinam.
It is estimated that there were 630 deaths from malaria in the Americas in 2017, which includes Lain America, the Caribbean, United States and Canada, compared to 460 in 2016 and 480 in 2010.
WHO stated that there were 773,500 cases in the area, which is a 14% increase over 2010 and 72% higher than 2015.
The majority of cases reported were in Venezuela with 53%, followed by Brazil (22 %), Colombia (8 %) and Peru (7 %). Belize, Brazil, Costa Rica, French Guyana, Nicaragua and Venezuela showed increases of over 20%.
In fact, Venezuela accounted for 84% of the increase in the region and is now one of the 10 countries in the world with more than 300,000 cases of malaria in the world in 2017.
However, there has been success in some of the countries, with Paraguay being the first country in the area, since Cuba some 45 years ago, to receive its certification of being malaria free and Argentina is in the process of obtaining the same certification.
Read more:
WHO
http://www.who.int/malaria/publications/world-malaria-report-2018/en/
20 November 2018
