Malaria cases climbed again in 2024, with funding at less than half the target
WHO's World malaria report counts 282 million cases and 610,000 deaths for 2024. The US$3.9 billion spent was under half the US$9.3 billion the global strategy called for.
| Group | Value (value) |
|---|---|
| Invested in 2024 | 3.9 |
| 2025 strategy target | 9.3 |
Malaria caused an estimated 282 million cases and 610,000 deaths in 2024, roughly 9 million more cases than the year before, and the money spent fighting it — US$3.9 billion — came to less than half the US$9.3 billion the global strategy set as the 2025 target, according to WHO's World malaria report, released on 4 December [s1]. The disease is not being brought under control on current funding; it is drifting the wrong way while the tools to reverse it exist but reach too few people.
Better tools, held back by money
The report's central tension is that the science is working where it is deployed. WHO estimates that wider use of newer tools — dual-ingredient insecticide-treated nets and the WHO-recommended malaria vaccines — prevented an estimated 170 million cases and 1 million deaths in 2024 [s1]. Since the first vaccine was recommended in 2021, 24 countries have introduced the shots into routine immunisation, and seasonal malaria chemoprevention now runs in 20 countries, reaching 54 million children in 2024, up from about 0.2 million in 2012 [s1]. Elimination is advancing at the other end: 47 countries and one territory have now been certified malaria-free, with Cabo Verde and Egypt certified in 2024 and Georgia, Suriname and Timor-Leste in 2025 [s1].
None of that has bent the global curve, because funding has been flat for a decade. WHO is blunt that the plateau in global funding is "limiting the reach of life-saving interventions," and that recent cuts to official development assistance have "severely disrupted health systems, weakening routine surveillance and forcing the cancellation or postponement of most planned malaria surveys," while raising the risk of stock-outs and delayed campaigns [s1]. A response that reaches half its budget cannot scale the tools that work.
Where the burden sits, and what threatens it
The deaths remain overwhelmingly African and overwhelmingly young: an estimated 95% of malaria deaths in 2024 were in the WHO African Region, most among children under five [s1]. The global death rate stood at 13.8 per 100,000 population, more than three times the Global technical strategy's target of 4.5 [s1].
Beyond funding, the report catalogues biological threats closing in on the tools themselves. Partial resistance to artemisinin — the backbone of malaria treatment — has now been confirmed or suspected in at least 8 countries in Africa [s1]. Confirmed pyrethroid resistance in 48 countries is eroding the effectiveness of insecticide-treated nets; parasites with pfhrp2 gene deletions are undermining rapid diagnostic tests; and invasive Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes, resistant to many common insecticides, have now spread to 9 African countries, threatening urban transmission in places that had little malaria before [s1]. Extreme weather and conflict compound all of it by shifting mosquito habitats and cutting off access to care [s1].
The long view, and what to watch
Set against the single bad year, the two-decade record is still one of enormous gains. WHO estimates that since 2000, 2.3 billion malaria cases and 14 million deaths have been averted worldwide, including 1 million lives saved in 2024 alone [s2]. That is precisely what makes the financing plateau costly: the machinery to save lives is built and proven, and it is being starved rather than scaled.
"Increasing numbers of cases and deaths, the growing threat of drug resistance and the impact of funding cuts all threaten to roll back the progress we have made over the past two decades," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, adding that "none of these challenges is insurmountable" with the leadership of the most-affected countries and targeted investment [s1]. The near-term test is whether endemic governments hold to the political commitments of the Yaoundé Declaration and the WHO-led "Big Push" as external money recedes [s1] — the same domestic-financing bet now being made across global health.
Sources
- [s1] Wider use of new tools against malaria helped prevent an estimated 170 million cases and 1 million deaths in 2024, World Health Organization, 4 December 2025. https://www.who.int/news/item/04-12-2025-new-tools-saved-a-million-lives-from-malaria-last-year-but-progress-under-threat-as-drug-resistance-rises
- [s2] World malaria report 2025, World Health Organization, 4 December 2025. https://www.who.int/teams/global-malaria-programme/reports/world-malaria-report-2025
Sources
- Wider use of new tools against malaria helped prevent an estimated 170 million cases and 1 million deaths in 2024 — World Health Organization , December 4, 2025
- World malaria report 2025 — World Health Organization , December 4, 2025
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