The number of malaria cases worldwide surged by millions last year, the World Health Organization said Thursday - a change driven by extreme weather events such as catastrophic flooding in Pakistan, as well as other conflicts and humanitarian crises that allowed the deadly disease to proliferate.
But in recent years, the agency said, the global case count "was significantly higher than before the pandemic." There were an additional 11 million recorded cases in 2020, followed by no change in 2021, then an increase of 5 million cases in 2022, the most recent year for which data are available - resulting in about 249 million cases worldwide.
According to the WHO, the wave of additional cases logged between 2021 and 2022 were concentrated largely across five countries. Pakistan saw the largest rise in malaria, with 2.1 million cases during that time. The case incidence jumped fivefold there, health officials said, from 2.2 to 11.5 cases per 1,000 people at risk in the country.
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