Global malaria prevention has saved 14 million lives since 2000 C.E.

Story: 2025 C.E.  |  Last updated: April 24, 2025

Twenty-five years of coordinated global effort have produced one of public health’s most consequential achievements: malaria prevention programs have saved 14 million lives and averted 2.3 billion cases of the disease since 2000 C.E. Those figures come from the WHO World Malaria Report 2025, published December 4, 2025 C.E. — the most comprehensive annual assessment of global malaria control. In 2024 C.E. alone, more than 170 million cases and 1 million deaths were averted, meaning the pace of lives saved is accelerating even as total case counts nudged upward.

At a glance

• Malaria prevention: 47 countries and one territory are now officially certified malaria-free by WHO, including three new certifications in 2025 C.E. — Georgia, Suriname, and Timor-Leste.
• Malaria-free countries: The number of countries reporting fewer than 1,000 cases annually has grown from 13 in 2000 C.E. to 37 in 2024 C.E., nearly a threefold increase.
• Malaria vaccines: As of October 2025 C.E., 24 countries had introduced one or both WHO-approved malaria vaccines into routine childhood immunization schedules.

How four tools changed the math on malaria

The WHO report credits four core interventions for the generational decline in malaria mortality. Each targets a different point in the transmission chain, and their combined deployment is what makes the numbers possible.

The most familiar tool — the insecticide-treated bed net — has quietly undergone a major upgrade. As recently as 2019 C.E., next-generation dual-insecticide nets designed to fight growing insecticide resistance made up just 10% of nets shipped globally. By 2024 C.E., that figure had risen to 84%. The shift was driven by the New Nets Project, a partnership led by Unitaid and the Global Fund, with support from the Gates Foundation and the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative.

Indoor residual spraying remains the second pillar. Seasonal malaria chemoprevention — giving antimalarial drugs preventively to young children during peak transmission months — reached 54 million children across 19 African countries in 2024 C.E., with Nigeria, which carries the world’s highest malaria burden, accounting for more than half.

The vaccine era arrives

The vaccine story is newer and still unfolding. WHO approved the world’s first malaria vaccine, RTS,S/AS01, in 2021 C.E., followed by a second — R21/Matrix-M — in 2023 C.E. A partnership between manufacturers, WHO, UNICEF, and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, drove down per-dose costs and made rollout financially viable across low-income countries.

By 2024 C.E., 17 African countries were administering malaria vaccines through routine childhood immunization programs. By 2025 C.E., seven more had joined them. The speed of that expansion is notable: it took decades to develop a working malaria vaccine; it took less than four years to get it into 24 countries.

Suriname’s 2025 C.E. certification as malaria-free is particularly significant — it is the first country in the Amazonian region to eliminate the disease entirely, demonstrating that elimination is achievable even in biologically challenging environments where dense forest cover and limited health infrastructure have historically made control difficult.

What the progress hasn’t yet solved

The 14 million lives saved is real. So is the harder picture that surrounds it. In 2024 C.E., there were still 282 million malaria cases and 610,000 deaths globally — both figures higher than 2023 C.E. A child still dies from malaria roughly every minute, and 75% of deaths in Africa occur in children under five.

Two emerging threats could reverse decades of work. Partial resistance to artemisinin derivatives — the backbone of malaria treatment — has now been confirmed or suspected in at least eight African countries. Insecticide resistance among Anopheles mosquitoes is weakening the bed nets and sprays that anchored progress for two decades. Global malaria funding in 2024 C.E. reached $3.9 billion — only 42% of the $9.3 billion target set by WHO’s Global Technical Strategy. Cuts to U.S. foreign assistance in 2025 C.E. created direct uncertainty around bed net distribution and chemoprevention programs in the countries that need them most.

This pattern — sustained, evidence-based intervention producing measurable results over decades — shows up across global health. U.K. cancer death rates have reached their lowest level on record, and the renewable energy transition follows a similarly compounding arc. Progress is rarely fast, and it is never guaranteed — but it compounds when the investment holds.

The tools to eliminate malaria now exist. The question the WHO Director-General raised directly in the 2025 C.E. report is whether the world will continue to fund them.

For more stories on global health milestones from the Good News for Humankind archive, the evidence is worth following.

Read more

For more on this story, see: WHO World Malaria Report 2025

For more from Good News for Humankind, see:

• U.K. cancer death rates are at their lowest level on record
• Renewables now make up at least 49% of global power capacity
• The Good News for Humankind archive on global health

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