Transition of Malaria Control to Malaria Elimination in India

Abstract

India achieved spectacular gains in malaria control during the ‘Eradication Era’ in the 1950s till the mid-1960s. The Global Malaria Eradication Programme of WHO launched in the 1950s was a huge success in India with the incidence dropping from an estimated 75 million cases and 8,00,000 deaths in 1947 to just 49,151 cases and no deaths in 1961 and malaria was thought to be on the verge of eradication. Thus, since the early 1950s, the malaria program in India has produced a number of successes, and has faced some setbacks also which have led to malaria resurgences. Recently, India envisages eliminating malaria by 2030 in line with the Global Technical Strategy (2016-2030). The National Framework for Malaria Elimination was launched in 2016 and National Strategic Plan 2017-2022 in 2017, provide a phased approach to elimination and outline priority areas and activities required to be implemented based on district-level stratification of burden. Malaria program is now moving away from “One Fit Size to All”. States and districts are classified in four categories to eliminate malaria in a phased manner. In 2019, India recorded a 60% reduction in reported cases compared with 2017 and a 46% reduction compared with 2018. India’s progress for drastic reduction of malaria incidences have also mentioned in World Malaria Report 2018, 2019 and 2020. However, there are challenges for the country to sustain the progress made so far and to accelerate further malaria activities to achieve the goal for malaria elimination by 2030. Since the discovery of malaria transmission was made in India by Sir Ronald Ross in 1897, an intensive works was carried on malaria control in India. There were different phases for malaria control in the country to moving from control towards eradication and elimination. The paper gives a brief history of malaria control in India and analyses the present malaria situation.