MALARIA: A STATISTICAL INDEX

Date: May 12, 1997

  1. Number of clinical cases per year: 300 million to 500 million

  2. Number of deaths per year: 1.5 million to 2.7 million, about 4 percent to 5 percent of all fatalities

  3. Rank among major infectious diseases in mortality rates: 3rd (after pneumococcal acute respiratory infections and tuberculosis)

  4. Occurrence: 90 percent of all cases in sub-Saharan Africa; two-thirds of remaining cases in six countries: India, Brazil, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Colombia, Solomon Islands (in descending order)

  5. Population affected: 2.4 billion people, about 40 percent of the world's population

  6. Estimated global annual direct and indirect costs (including lost labor) in 1995: $2 billion

  7. Estimated worldwide expenditure on malaria research, prevention, and treatment (1993): $84 million

  8. Estimated worldwide expenditure per malaria fatality (ca. 1990): $65; as compared with HIV/AIDS, $3,274 and asthma, $789

Sources: World Health Organization, Wellcome Trust

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