Cape Verde has become the fourth country in Africa and the 44th in the world to eliminate malaria.
The World Health Organisation on its website said on Friday the country’s “long journey” to eliminating malaria included free treatment and testing for all new arrivals and systematic surveillance and mapping of mosquito breeding sites throughout the year.
WHO director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said “I salute the government and people of Cape Verde for their unwavering commitment and resilience in their journey to eliminating malaria,”
These structures will remain in place to help the country fight other mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue fever.
“Cape Verde’s success is the latest in the global fight against malaria, and gives us hope that with existing tools, as well as new ones including vaccines, we can dare to dream of a malaria-free world.”
Africa has the highest number of cases of the mosquito-borne disease in the world. In 2022, 94% of the 249 million cases globally and 95% of deaths were recorded on the continent.
Algeria, Morocco and Mauritius were certified malaria-free in 2019, 2010 and 1973 respectively.
Cape Verde regularly experienced severe epidemics across all the archipelago’s 10 islands.
However, since the 1980s, malaria had been confined to only two islands, Santiago and Boa Vista, both of which have not recorded cases since 2017.
