Key Facts | About Malaria

241 Million Global Cases

Globally, there were an estimated 241 million malaria cases in 2020 in 85 malaria-endemic countries.
In the period 2000–2020, an estimated 1.7 billion malaria cases and 10.6 million malaria deaths have been averted.
Malaria case incidence (i.e. cases per 1000 population at risk) reduced from 80.1 in 2000 to 59 in 2020 globally.
From 2000 to 2020, the number of countries with fewer than 100 indigenous cases increased from 6 to 26.

Between 2007 and 2018, almost US$ 7.3 billion was invested in basic research and product development for malaria.
The malaria R&D funding landscape has been led by investment in:
- Drugs (US$ 2.6 billion, 36% of malaria funding between 2007 and 2018)
- Basic research (US$ 1.9 billion, 26%)
- Vaccines R&D (US$ 1.8 billion, 25%)
- Vector control products (US$ 453 million, 6.2%)
- Vector control diagnostic (US$ 185 million, 2.5%)
Over the period 2010–2020, international sources provided 69% of the total funding for malaria control and elimination, led by the United States of America (USA), the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK), and France.
Total funding for malaria control and elimination in 2020 was estimated at US$ 3.3 billion, compared with US$ 3.0 billion in 2019 and US$ 2.7 billion in 2018. The amount invested in 2020 falls short of the US$ 6.8 billion estimated to be required, leaving a funding gap of at least US$ 3.5 billion.
Of the US$ 3.3 billion invested in 2020, more than US$ 2.2 billion came from international funders. The highest contributions in 2020 were from the USA, which provided a total of US$ 1.3 billion, followed by Germany and the UK with about US$ 0.2 billion each, and then US$ 0.1 billion from France and Japan. Of the US$ 3.3 billion invested in 2020, nearly US$ 1.4 billion (42%) was channelled through the Global Fund – an increase of about US$ 0.2 billion since 2019.

Globally, 3.1 billion rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) for malaria were sold by manufacturers in 2010–2020, with nearly 81% of these sales being to sub-Saharan African countries. In the same period, national malaria programmes (NMPs) distributed 2.2 billion RDTs – 88% in sub-Saharan Africa.
National data reported by NMPs show that, in the same period, 2.1 billion artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) were delivered to health service providers to treat malaria patients in the public health sector.
Manufacturers’ delivery data for 2004–2020 show that almost 2.3 billion insecticide-treated mosquito nets (ITNs) were supplied globally in that period, of which 2 billion (86%) were supplied to sub-Saharan Africa.
Manufacturers delivered about 229 million ITNs to malaria endemic countries in 2020. About 91% of these ITNs were delivered to countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
By 2020, 65% of households in sub-Saharan Africa had at least one ITN, increasing from about 5% in 2000. Subsequently, the percentage of the population sleeping under an ITN also increased considerably between 2000 and 2020, for the whole population (from 2% to 43%), for children aged under 5 years (from 3% to 49%) and for pregnant women (from 3% to 49%).
The number of children reached with at least one dose of seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) steadily increased, from about 0.2 million in 2012 to about 33.5 million in 2020.