Invasive Mosquito Species Threatens India’s 2030 Malaria Elimination Goal

Syllabus: GS2/Health

Context

• As per the Malaria Elimination Technical Report, 2025 urban malaria has emerged as a national concern threatening India’s goal of eliminating the mosquito-borne disease by 2030.

Major Highlights

• Drivers of Transmission: Asymptomatic infections, difficult terrain, and population movement continue to drive transmission.
• Cross-border transmission from Myanmar and Bangladesh also continues to affect border districts in northeastern India.
• Besides the malaria elimination goal, India has also assigned itself an intermediate goal of achieving zero indigenous cases by 2027, aligning with the World Health Organisation’s global strategy.
• Invasive Threat: Anopheles stephensi is a significant mosquito species, now recognised as an invasive threat due to its ability to thrive in urban environments, breed in artificial containers (tanks, tires).
• Reasons for Urban Transmission: Container breeding, construction sites, informal settings, high population density and fragmented healthcare delivery. 
• High-burden pockets: India has now largely entered the pre-elimination phase, where malaria is no longer uniformly distributed across large geographical areas. High-burden pockets persist in districts of Odisha, Tripura and Mizoram. 
• Key challenges: Inconsistent private-sector reporting, limited entomological capacity, drug and insecticide resistance, operational gaps in remote tribal areas, and sporadic shortages of diagnostics and treatment commodities.
• Recommendations: Strengthening surveillance systems, enhancing vector monitoring and improving supply chain reliability.

What is Malaria?

• Malaria is a life-threatening disease spread to humans by some types of mosquitoes and is mostly found in tropical countries. 
• Transmission: It is caused by plasmodium protozoa. The plasmodium parasites spread through the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes. Blood transfusion and contaminated needles may also transmit malaria. 
• Types of parasites: There are 5 Plasmodium parasite species that cause malaria in humans and 2 of these species – P. falciparum and P. vivax – pose the greatest threat. The other malaria species which can infect humans are P. malariae, P. ovale and P. knowlesi.
  • P. falciparum is the deadliest malaria parasite and the most prevalent on the African continent P. vivax is the dominant malaria parasite in most countries outside of sub-Saharan Africa.  
• Symptoms: Fever and flu-like illness, including chills, headache, muscle ache and fatigue.
• Vaccine: The RTS,S and R21 malaria vaccines act against P. falciparum, the deadliest malaria parasite globally and the most prevalent in Africa.
  • Both malaria vaccines are safe and efficacious, and both are prequalified by WHO.

Burden of Malaria (As per WHO)

• The malaria caseload in India was reduced by 69 percent from 6.4 million in 2017 to two million in 2023. 
• In 2023, India accounted for half of all estimated malaria cases in the WHO South-East Asia Region, followed by Indonesia, which accounted for just under one-third.
  • The Region had eight malaria endemic countries in 2023, accounting for 4 million cases and contributing 1.5 per cent of the burden of malaria cases globally.
• Bhutan and Timor-Leste, from the Region, reported zero malaria deaths since 2013 and 2015, respectively, while Sri Lanka was certified malaria-free in 2016.

Indian government Initiatives to Control Malaria: 

• The Government of India set a target to eliminate malaria in India by 2027.
• In India, a National Framework for Malaria Elimination (NFME) has been developed and launched in 2016 aligned with the Global Technical Strategy (GTS) for malaria elimination 2016-2030.
• Malaria Elimination Research Alliance-India (MERA-India): It was established by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) as a conglomeration of partners working on malaria control.

Source: TH