El Salvador becomes Malaria free

  • El Salvador has become the first country in central America and the third in all Americas to get the malaria-free certificate from the World Health Organization (WHO) in recent years. 
  • Malaria elimination certificate is awarded to a country when the chain of indigenous transmission of the disease has been disrupted nationwide for at least three consecutive years. 
  • El Salvador, which received the certificate on February 25, 2021, didn’t report a single case of malaria that was acquired locally (indigenous) since 2017. 
  • It recorded it last malaria death in 1984.
  • The only other countries in the WHO Regions of Americas to have eliminated malaria in recent years are Paraguay (2018) and Argentina (2019).

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