Peter Sands Statement on the World Malaria Report 2025 – Opinion

December 4, 2025
by Peter Sands, Executive Director of The Global Fund

The global malaria report exposes two truths: after we invest, we save lives, and after we fail, malaria returns. This yr’s report, which incorporates figures for 2024, shows a halt to overall progress and highlights serious concerns, but is not going to hit the emergency button. But we should always. For years we have now warned against stagnation, but now the variety of cases is clearly increasing. When we receive data for 2025, it is going to likely show much more cases and deaths. If we do not take urgent motion now, 2026 shall be even worse. We face an actual risk of a large resurgence that would wipe out many years of progress and overwhelm health care systems.

We know the way to defeat malaria – the 21 countries which have eliminated the disease since 2010 are proof of this. But malaria still killed greater than 600,000 people last yr, most of them young African children. When a toddler dies every minute from a clearly preventable disease, it isn’t only a health failure – it is a political failure, a financial failure and an ethical failure.

Despite the big gains achieved over twenty years, progress has stalled and in some countries has regressed rapidly. Drug resistance is spreading across Africa. Conflict, displacement and climate change are changing transmission patterns. Surveillance systems and mosquito net distribution campaigns have been disrupted. There are violent revivals in lots of countries.

The report also shows that when countries lead decisively and after we invest the suitable resources – as within the Greater Mekong subregion and the growing group of nations near elimination – malaria will be dramatically stopped. These successes prove that leadership, investment and social motion work.

However, in probably the most burdened countries, mainly in Africa, we must intensify the fight. African leaders set out the way in which forward through the Yaounde Declaration. We have effective tools – including next-generation mosquito nets and other vector control interventions, latest treatments and diagnostics, and vaccines – but we’d like to deploy them on a much larger scale and at a much faster pace. In lots of the hardest-hit places, we’re simply not investing enough. Global financing currently accounts for lower than half of demand. Total annual investment to fight malaria in Africa, at just below $4 billion, is lower than the budget of a single large hospital in a high-income country.

Underinvestment within the fight against malaria has an enormous cost in kid’s lives, in addition to wasting money. Where we have now eliminated malaria, we now have to spend only a fraction of the previous investment to stop it from recurring. Where malaria is rampant, health care facilities are overwhelmed, children miss school and staff fall unwell. The economic case for investing within the fight against malaria is incredibly strong.

For many individuals within the wealthy world, malaria may seem to be a distant problem. But we should always not develop into complacent. Just 50 years ago, malaria was still a threat in southern Europe, and just 25 years earlier within the United States. With climate change, resistance and the emergence of more dangerous mosquito species, we’re seeing the spread of mosquito-borne diseases corresponding to dengue, chikungunya and malaria to latest geographic areas.

The alternative is straightforward: either we act now or we are going to face a crisis that may cost lives and money. If we take decisive motion – to fund the fight, strengthen health systems and empower communities – we are able to reverse these alarming trends and defeat malaria. However, we cannot simply wait for next yr’s report because we already know much of what it is going to contain.