Challenges to malaria control and success stories in Africa

For centuries, malaria has remained a serious public health problem among the human population living in different malaria-transmission settings in sub-Saharan Africa. This region carries almost 90% of all global cases of malaria. Currently, a number of reports indicate that the population of malaria vectors and the percentage of malaria cases are declining in sub-Saharan Africa. The reports further indicate that the significant reduc-tions of malaria morbidity and mortality are more observed in high-risk groups, includ-ing pregnant women and children under the age of 5. The decline in malaria prevalence and transmission has been reported mostly in areas that received massive distributions of malaria-intervention tools and in areas where clinical trials have been conducted. However, the main challenges facing the success stories of malaria control in sub-Saharan Africa are the sustainability of the intervention programs, increase of malarial vector population, and malarial parasites’ resistance to insecticides, and artemisinin-based com-bination therapy. Here, we discuss a number of factors which in one way or another may potentially affect the gains so far achieved in the control of malaria in Africa.Copyright © Maralte. All rights reserved