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Share of population who have been diagnosed with Malaria.

This indicator measure trends in malaria morbidity and identify locations where the risk of disease is highest. With this information, programs can respond to unusual trends, such as epidemics, and direct resources to the populations most in need. This data also serves to inform global resource allocation for malaria such as when defining eligibility criteria for Global Fund finance.

Ministry of Health (MOH)

Ministry of Health (MOH)

Annual

Malaria incidence per 1,000 population.

Malaria is caused by Plasmodium parasites. The parasites are spread to people through the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes, called "malaria vectors." There are 5 parasite species that cause malaria in humans, and 2 of these species – P. falciparum and P. vivax – pose the greatest threat.

Case of malaria is defined as the occurrence of malaria infection in a person whom the presence of malaria parasites in the blood has been confirmed by a diagnostic test. The population considered is the population at risk of the disease.

The indicator is estimated at country level.

The total number of new cases, T, is estimated from the number of malaria cases reported by a Ministry of Health. That is:

𝑇 = (a + (𝑐 × 𝑒) /𝑑) × (1 + ℎ / 𝑔 + ((1 − 𝑔 − ℎ) /2) /g)

Where:

a is malaria cases confirmed in public sector; 

b is suspected cases tested;

c is presumed cases (not tested but treated as malaria);

d is reporting completeness; 

e is test positivity rate (malaria positive fraction) = a/b; 

f is cases in public sector, calculated by (a + (c x e))/d;

g is treatment seeking fraction in public sector;

h is treatment seeking fraction in private sector; 

i is the fraction not seeking treatment, calculated by (1-g-h)/2; 

j is cases in private sector, calculated by f x h/g; 

k is cases not in private and not in public, calculated by f x i/g; 

T is total cases, calculated by f + j + k. 

The Ministry of Health should create interventions or effectively scale-up existing interventions, which include early treatment of malaria cases.

The estimated incidence can differ from the incidence reported by Ministry of Health which can be affected by: the completeness of reporting; the number of reported cases can be lower than the estimated cases if the percentage of health facilities reporting in a month is less than 100%; the extent of malaria diagnostic testing (the number of slides examined or RDTs performed); the use of private health facilities which are usually not included in reporting systems and the indicator is estimated only where malaria transmission occurs.

All the metadata shown in this document was gathered from United Nation Statistics Division. The metadata was extracted from https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/.