Healthcare disruptions linked to the coronavirus pandemic helped malaria kill 69,000 more people in 2020 than the previous year, but a worst-case scenario was averted, the World Health Organization said.
In total over 627,000 people globally - most of them babies in the poorest parts of Africa - were killed by malaria last year compared with 558,000 in 2019, the WHO said in its annual malaria report.
The number eclipses the 224,000 people reported to have died from the coronavirus in Africa since the start of the pandemic.
About two thirds of the additional malaria deaths in 2020 were due to coronavirus restrictions disrupting prevention, diagnosis and treatment of malaria, the WHO said.
But efforts to maintain health services despite the challenges meant Sub-Saharan Africa did not see the doubling of malaria deaths in 2020 that the WHO had warned was a possibility.
Instead, the number of deaths in the region rose 12% compared with 2019, according to WHO data.
Source: www.reuters.com
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