Amid ongoing plans to eliminate malaria, experts have found the incidence of malaria in India is 0.66 cases per one thousand population last year.

Official sources say in the year 2017, reported malaria cases have declined by 23% as compared to 2016 in India.

As per the World Malaria Report 2017 of the World Health Organization (WHO), the estimated malaria cases from India are 87% in South East Asia region.

Malaria is mainly concentrated in the states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Orissa, and Tripura because of the inaccessible terrain – many areas get cut off post-monsoon, the presence of efficient vectors – mosquito that transmits malaria and difficult terrain because of which malaria continues to be high in many pockets.

Global Technical Strategy (2016-30) announced by WHO and adopted by World Health Assembly in May 2015 calls for malaria elimination by 2030.

According to the Minister of State (Health and Family Welfare) Ashwini Kumar, the Government has unveiled a plan to eliminate Malaria by 2030. The National Framework for Malaria Elimination (NFME) 2016-2030 document launched on 11th February 2016, lays out the vision, mission, broad principles and practices to achieve the target of malaria elimination by 2030 synchronizing with the Global Technical Strategy (GTS).

The Government has drafted National Strategic Plan for malaria elimination (2017-2020) wherein the country has been stratified based on the malaria burden into four categories – category 0 to category 3 and based on this the intervention of malaria control and prevention are being strengthened.

Interventions that are being strengthened are Early diagnosis and complete treatment; Case-based surveillance and rapid response; Integrated vector management; Indoor residual spray (IRS); Long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs)/ Insecticide-treated nets (ITNs); Larval source management (LSM); Epidemic preparedness and early response; Monitoring & Evaluation; Advocacy, coordination and partnerships; Behavior change communication (BCC) and Community mobilization and programme planning & management.

The report shows that communicable diseases constitute almost two-thirds of the disease burden in India from a little over a third in 1990. Despite the transition, which is associated with development, malnutrition remains the single top risk for health loss.

All states have thus made what’s called the ‘epidemiological transition’ there remain wide variations in their disease profiles with some having made that transition as early as 1986, and others as recently as 2010.

The first group to make the transition in 1986 included Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Goa, Himachal Pradesh and Punjab. The last group to do so, accounting for the highest number of people (588 million), made the transition almost a quarter of a century later, in 2010. This group included Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Odisha. India as a country made the transition in 2003.

The Report’s executive summary says with almost one-fifth of the world’s population living in India, the health status and the drivers of health loss are expected to vary between different parts of the country and between the states.

Accordingly, effective efforts to improve population health in each state require systematic knowledge of the local health status and trends. While state-level trends for some important health indicators have been available in India, a comprehensive assessment of the diseases causing the most premature deaths and disability in each state, the risk factors responsible for this burden, and their time trends have not been available in a single standardised framework.

The Report finds that the Health status improving, but major inequalities between states Life expectancy at birth improved in India from 59.7 years in 1990 to 70.3 years in 2016 for females, and from 58.3 years to 66.9 years for males.

There were, however, continuing inequalities between states, with a range of 66.8 years in Uttar Pradesh to 78.7 years in Kerala for females, and from 63.6 years in Assam to 73.8 years in Kerala for males in 2016.

The per person disease burden measured as DALYs rate dropped by 36% from 1990 to 2016 in India, after adjusting for the changes in the population age structure during this period. But there was an almost two-fold difference in this disease burden rate between the states in 2016, with Assam, Uttar Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh having the highest rates, and Kerala and Goa the lowest rates.

While the disease burden rate in India has improved since 1990, it was 72% higher per person than in Sri Lanka or China in 2016. The under-5 mortality rate has reduced substantially from 1990 in all states, but there was a four-fold difference in this rate between the highest in Assam and Uttar Pradesh as compared with the lowest in Kerala in 2016, highlighting the vast health inequalities between the states.

Large differences between states in the changing disease profile of the total disease burden in India measured as DALYs, 61% was due to communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases (termed infectious and associated diseases in this summary for simplicity) in 1990, which dropped to 33% in 2016. There was a corresponding increase in the contribution of non-communicable diseases from 30% of the total disease burden in 1990 to 55% in 2016, and of injuries 18 %.

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