According to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, “Malaria is as old as Egyptian civilization itself, but the disease that afflicted pharaohs now belongs to its history.”
Nearly a century has passed since Egyptian officials began their initial attempts to eradicate the fatal infectious disease spread by mosquitoes.
When a nation can demonstrate that the transmission chain has been disrupted for at least the last three years in a row, certification is given. At least 600,000 people are killed by malaria each year, almost all of them are in Africa.
The WHO commended “the Egyptian government and people” in a statement released on Sunday for their efforts to “eliminate a disease that has been present throughout it.
It stated that, after Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, Egypt was the third nation in the WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean Region to receive certification.
44 nations and one territory have accomplished this feat worldwide.
However, the WHO stated that the certification was merely “the beginning of a new phase” and advised Egypt to exercise caution in order to maintain its status as a malaria-free country.
A nation must prove its ability to stop the spread of the disease in order to receive WHO accreditation.
According to the UN public health organization, Egypt’s initial attempts to reduce human-mosquito interaction started in the 1920s, when it outlawed the growing of rice and other crops close to residential areas.
