KarunaNews Story

A century after beginning to stamp out malaria by banning rice cultivation and agricultural crops near homes, Egypt has been certified malaria-free by the World Health Organization. “Malaria is as old as Egyptian civilization itself, but the disease that plagued pharaohs now belongs to its history," said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Certification is granted when a country proves that the transmission chain is interrupted for at least the previous three consecutive years. Egypt was the third country to be certified in the WHO's Eastern Mediterranean Region, following the United Arab Emirates and Morocco. Malaria kills at least 600,000 people every year, nearly all of them in Africa.