Malaria death toll to exceed Covid-19's in sub-Saharan Africa: WHO

LONDON: Deaths from malaria due to disruptions during the coronavirus pandemic to services designed to tackle the mosquito-borne disease will far exceed those killed by Covid-19 in sub-Saharan Africa, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned.

More than 409,000 people globally - most of them babies in the poorest parts of Africa - were killed by malaria last year, the WHO said in its latest global malaria report, and Covid-19 will almost certainly make that toll higher in 2020.

“Our estimates are that depending on the level of service disruption (due to COVID-19) ... there could be an excess of malaria deaths of somewhere between 20,000 and 100,000 in sub-Saharan Africa, most of them in young children,” Pedro Alsonso, director of the WHO’s malaria programme, told reporters.

“It’s very likely that excess malaria mortality is larger than the direct COVID mortality.”

-Courtesy by Reuters