Malaria control and elimination efforts across the Southern African Development Community (SADC) are at a critical point, with case numbers rising over the past two years and reversing hard‑earned gains, a recent analysis by The Conversation Africa reported.
The SADC bloc, which brings together 16 southern African nations, has historically battled high malaria transmission. In recent years the region had made measurable progress in reducing infections and deaths, but new data show an upward trend that threatens to erode those achievements.
According to the analysis, several member states have already recorded increases in malaria cases, undoing reductions that took years of coordinated vector‑control, treatment and prevention programmes to achieve.
People living in malaria‑prone areas are now at a higher risk than before, the report warned, underscoring the growing vulnerability of communities that were once considered to be on a path toward elimination.
The study points to climate change and cuts in donor funding as key pressures that are undermining malaria‑control initiatives across the region, limiting the capacity of health systems to sustain interventions such as indoor residual spraying and rapid diagnostic testing.
Experts advise SADC governments to strengthen surveillance, maintain and expand vector‑control measures, and secure more reliable financing to protect the progress made and move toward regional malaria‑elimination targets.
Without decisive action, the region risks missing both its own and global malaria‑reduction goals, leaving millions of people exposed to a disease that had been on a downward trajectory.
<small>Source: AllAfrica — read the original story there.</small>
