China declared free of malaria

02 Jul 2021

The World Health Organization (WHO) certified China free of malaria on 30 June 2021.

China is the first country in the Western Pacific Region to eliminate malaria in more than 3 decades. The country had more than 30 million cases a year in the 1940s but numbers fell after a malaria control programme began in the 1950s. No cases were recorded in the four years leading up to 2020.