What’s new: The World Health Organization (WHO) has certified that China has eliminated malaria.
The WHO announced Wednesday that China, which used to report 30 million annual cases of malaria in the 1940s, was free of the mosquito-borne infectious disease. The country has not reported a new case since 2017.
“Today we congratulate the people of China on ridding the country of malaria,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general, said in the statement. “Their success was hard-earned and came only after decades of targeted and sustained action.”
The background: In November, China applied for the certification after reporting zero cases for four straight years. The WHO has declared 40 countries and territories free of malaria, including Singapore, Argentina and El Salvador.
In 2015, Chinese pharmacologist Tu Youyou won a Nobel Prize for discovering artemisinin, a type of drug used to treat malaria.
Contact reporter Cai Xuejiao (xuejiaocai@caixin.com) and editor Michael Bellart (michaelbellart@caixin.com)
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