World Malaria Day
Next: April 25, 2027
A world free of malaria is possible.
The story
Where it comes from
World Malaria Day grew out of Africa Malaria Day. On 25 April 2000, leaders and delegations from 44 malaria-affected African countries met in Abuja, Nigeria, and signed the Abuja Declaration, pledging to halve malaria deaths on the continent by 2010, and they marked the summit by naming 25 April Africa Malaria Day. In 2007 the World Health Assembly, where WHO's member states meet, made it World Malaria Day, first held in 2008, to keep the world's attention on a disease that can be prevented and cured.
How it's celebrated
WHO and health ministries use the day to take stock of progress and to call for continued investment and commitment. Campaigns remind people how malaria is beaten: sleeping under insecticide-treated nets, getting tested quickly for any fever, and taking the full course of treatment. Countries close to ending the disease, and those that already have, use the day to share how they did it.
Did you know
- In 1897, working in India, the British doctor Ronald Ross found the malaria parasite in a mosquito's stomach, and won the Nobel Prize in 1902 for showing how malaria enters the body.
- The Chinese scientist Tu Youyou found the antimalarial drug artemisinin with help from ancient Chinese medical texts, and won the Nobel Prize in 2015.
- China, which reported about 30 million malaria cases a year in the 1940s, was certified malaria-free by WHO in 2021.
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