Malaria Shows No Sign of Stopping as US Funding Disappears

Hi, it’s Anna in Virginia. Efforts to fight malaria that looked like a success story a decade ago are not going well. I’ll fill you in, but first...

World health leaders’ goal this century of drastically cutting malaria cases and deaths globally was already veering off track, and President Donald Trump’s severe funding cuts are set to make the situation much worse. Those who will suffer the most are children.

This is according to the World Health Organization’s annual malaria report that comes out each December. The picture hasn’t been particularly rosy ever since 2015, when progress combatting the disease stalled. Cases have largely been rising since then. Insecticide resistance is partly to blame, as is underfunding — and the future looks especially bleak.

Since 2010, US government funding made up 37% of money spent on efforts to prevent and fight malaria around the world, according to the WHO report. Last year, global spending on malaria totaled $3.9 billion. When Trump took office in January, he quickly moved to slash funding for international public health efforts and gutted the US Agency for International Development.

While the WHO’s report focuses on 2024 data, it says that the US retreat from humanitarian aid has caused “widespread disruption to health operations around the world.”

“The burden of these setbacks is expected to fall disproportionately on children and younger populations,” WHO adds.

Children are particularly at risk of dying from malaria. In 2024, there were 282 million malaria cases and 610,000 deaths worldwide. African countries make up 95% of cases and deaths. In that region, children under 5 accounted for 75% of malaria-related deaths, according to the WHO.

“It does demand a complete rethink about how malaria is going to be done,” Tim Freeman, who retired last year after almost 15 years with Rotarians Against Malaria in Papua New Guinea. “It can’t be business as usual.”

I first met Freeman over Zoom in 2023 as I reported for an investigation into the declining quality of insecticide-treated bed nets, one of the main preventive efforts against malaria. Freeman noted back then that the rise in malaria cases starting in 2015 coincided with a change in how some bed nets were made. The shift meant they didn’t last as long as they should.

New malaria vaccines might be a bright spot. Three countries were able to give them to children prior to last year. In 2024, 17 countries offered doses to younger populations. This effort, too, is constrained by funding and many countries are unable to make the lifesaving shots available, according to the report.

Lest Americans think this isn’t their problem, 2023 saw 10 cases of homegrown malaria, meaning people who contracted the disease didn’t get it through travel. Some in the infectious disease community saw this as a bad sign. Two potential cases are being investigated this year.

And Politico reported earlier this year that Trump gutted malaria work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, leaving the US less prepared to monitor cases at home while the global threat continues to grow. — Anna Edney