HIGHLIGHTS

WHO Thailand joins Thailand and the global community in commemorating World Malaria Day on 25 April.   The theme this year is “Invest in the future: defeat malaria”.   This day provides an opportunity to highlight progress, needs, and challenges in malaria control and to endorse the vision of Thailand’s National Malaria Control and Elimination Strategy (2012-2016) that 80% of the country will be free from locally acquired malaria transmission by 2020.  

Over the last decade, the world, and South-east Asia in particular, has made major progress in the fight against malaria. Since 2000, malaria mortality rates have fallen by more than 25% and 50 of the 99 countries with ongoing transmission are now on track to meet the 2015 World Health Assembly target of reducing incidence rates by more than 75%.

Thailand has been a leader in this global effort and has achieved a steady and significant decrease in malaria incidence over the past 30 years, from almost 500,000 cases and 4000 deaths in 1981 to less than 50,000 cases and 80 deaths in 2011.  A major scale-up of vector control interventions, together with increased access to diagnostic testing and quality-assured treatment, has been key to this progress. However, malaria remains a significant public health problem in Thai provinces bordering Myanmar, Cambodia, and Malaysia.   Along the western border with Myanmar where incidence is highest, the past 3 years have not seen a decline in incidence rates.  

Thailand’s commitment to elimination of malaria is further threatened by increasing evidence of the development of artemisinin resistant falciparum malaria.  The Thailand-Cambodia borders have long been associated with the development of antimalarial drug resistance, first to chloroquine, sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine and mefloquine and since 2006 to artemisinin.  While various artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACT) remain the most effective antimalarial treatments available today for falciparum malaria, drug efficacy needs to be closely monitored. 

Thailand’s national malaria control and elimination plan highlights four key strategies:   ensure effective early diagnosis and treatment, maintain effective vector control, provide comprehensive behavior change communication, and strengthen effective surveillance and program monitoring.   These efforts will be supplemented by activities focused on responding to concerns over artemisinin resistance in Thailand and the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS).  

In response to these concerns, WHO is collaborating with multiple stakeholders and countries in the GMS, including Thailand, to launch the Emergency Response to Artemisinin Resistance in Phnom Penh as part of the World Malaria Day celebration on 25 April.   Intensive efforts in Thailand and throughout the GMS will be required to not only address artemisinin resistance, but also finally achieve control of malaria.  

More information:

More information on World Malaria Day

Press release: WHO calls for greater investment to eliminate malaria

Global Call to Action to ‘Make Every Life Count’ made in Bangkok today

19 April 2013 ¦BANGKOK - At the first-ever Global Summit on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) that concluded today in Bangkok, governments, UN and development agencies made a global Call to Action to ensure that important life events such as births and deaths as well as the causes of death are registered for every person. To ensure that countries and regional partners can access the necessary political and technical support to implement country-owned strategies all actors need to come together at the global level.

“Improving civil registration systems is critical to improving health services,” noted
Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, Assistant Director-General for Health Systems and Innovation at the World Health Organization (WHO) and Executive Secretary a.i. of the Health Metrics Network (HMN). “When we know how many children are born, how many people die and what the principal causes of their death are, we know better where to prioritize health investments.”

The Bangkok Call to Action calls for countries and development partners to remove barriers to universal civil registration, including out-dated laws, weak infrastructure, poor training of staff and inadequate funding. The Call to Action builds on momentum generated from regional initiatives launched in Asia and the Pacific, Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean to improve birth registration, death registration and CRVS systems. It also reflects the urgent need to prioritize strengthening CRVS systems on the post-2015 development agenda, as they provide essential data for analysing and monitoring trends and for developing policies and services for the population.

More information:

The Health Metrics Network

Press Release: Strengthening birth and death registration: Global Call to Action to 'Make Every Life Count' made in Bangkok today

Global Summit on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics

The Thailand country office of the World Health Organization is now on Facebook. Come and follow our activities in the country. As a specialized UN agency for global health, the WHO first set up a country office in Thailand more than 60 years ago. It has been collaborating closely with the Royal Thai Government and other relevant partners over the past six decades on public health development in Thailand. That work continues today.

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