Scaling up impact of malaria control programmes: a tale of events in Sub-Saharan Africa and People’s Republic of China

Please see Additional file 1 for translations of the abstract into the six official working languages of the United Nations.The review highlights malaria events, achievements and scaling up impact with scientific evidence in moving malaria from epidemic status towards sustained control and elimination from 1960–2011. The unprecedented and substantial reduction in malaria incidence and consequently mortality rates, at varied degrees across African countries and People’s Republic of China (P.R.China) are very encouraging, although the gains are still fragile. Increased political commitment and available financial resources collectively from governments and various stakeholders are paramount in sustaining the scaling up innovative and integrated malaria control interventions, and health system strengthening to turn the tide against the malaria public health and its related effects in Sub-Saharan Africa (SS Africa) and elsewhere.There has been improvement in the health situation in most African countries since 1960 and malaria in particular is decreasing over time in SS Africa; where the global burden of the disease is significantly approximately 90% and P.R. China accounts for less than 10%. The recent statistics showing reductions in malaria deaths are very encouraging, but the situation is fragile and malaria should not be allowed to resurge [1-3]. Malaria is a vector-borne disease caused by protozoan parasites, i.e. Plasmodium falciparum, P. vivax, P. malariae, P. ovale, or P. knowlesi that completes a complex cycle of development alternating between human hosts and mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles[4]. The disease emerged as a worldwide epidemic in the 1960s when global malaria eradication was abandoned [5,6]. Consequently, the emergence of insecticide resistant and drug resistant parasite strains and vectors were greatly fuelled by poverty, poor economy, political instability, poor health infrastructure and equipment, deficiencies in health systems and policy part