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SL celebrates two years without malaria
Oct 24, 201405:20 PM
Sri Lanka has not reported a local case of malaria since October 2012, according to the Sri Lankan Anti-Malarial Campaign. According to Medical Xpress, if SL can remain malaria-free for one more year, the country will be eligible to apply to the World Health Organization for malaria-free certification. This remarkable success was achieved rapidly and largely during a protracted civil war. As recently as the year 2000, Sri Lanka had over 100,000 cases of malaria.
The Malaria Elimination Group, an independent international advisory group on malariaelimination convened by UC San Francisco, gathered last week in Colombo for its ninth meeting to celebrate Sri Lanka’s achievements.
At the end of deliberations, the Group signed the Colombo Declaration on Eliminating Malaria to affirm continued assistance to Sri Lanka and to call upon the government to sustain financial and human resources needed to maintain the gains.
The Malaria Elimination Group meeting brought together representatives from Ministries of Health of malaria-endemic countries in Asia and Africa, the World Health Organization, and international health donors, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative.
The participants learned from Sri Lanka’s hard-earned progress since the 1960s when the country nearly eliminated malaria, but then suffered a catastrophic resurgence.
