WHO: Death Toll from Malaria Down by 51 Percent

The death toll caused by malaria slid down by 51 percent, according to a report released by the World Health Organization (WHO) Wednesday.

Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease caused by a parasite. It is often mistaken as flu because the symptoms are usually the same. However, its complications are fatal in which 219 million cases of malaria were recorded in 2010 alone with 660,000 people dead. About 91 percent of deaths were from Africa.

WHO gave out good news after publishing its World Malaria Report which proved that all efforts placed on fighting against malaria was indeed paying off.

The mortality rate from malaria in children aged younger than five years old decreased by 51 percent from 2000 to 2012 – a rate that is halfway our goal to combat the disease.

The report is a breakthrough, because for the first time, the mortality rate of children dying from this preventable and curable disease fell under 500,000.

This improvement against malaria accounts for the 20 percent reduction in the number of deaths since 2000.

Malaria control has saved lives of 3.3 million lives since 2000, and three million of those are children below five years old.

The successful malaria control is one of the greatest success stories in global health. It's especially applausive if we consider the fact that malaria has been with us since the earlier eras, and has killed more than any other disease in human history – more than war, cancer, and famine.

Through the implementation of three low-cost revolutionary tools: 1) The rapid diagnostic test, or RDT, 2) the malaria treatment -- artemisinin-based combination therapies, or ACTs, and a 3) mobile revolution under way in Africa, which will help us fight against malaria through fighting counterfeit drugs by enabling consumers to text a code to confirm a malaria treatment is genuine, addressing health facilities that lack lifesaving treatments by providing timely updates on stock levels, expanding the reach of health education to guarantee people sleep under their mosquito nets, and providing the real-time data on malaria cases that is the requirement for strategies to eradicate the disease.

Nevertheless, malaria remains as one of the biggest obstruction to saving lives, improving health, and unchaining human potential in much of the developing countries.