China declared malaria-free: a milestone in the world malaria eradication and Chinese public health

According to the World Malaria Report, 229 million people had malaria and 409 000 people died of it in 2019 [2]. Following a 60-year effort of the national malaria control programme, transmission of Plasmodium falciparum was interrupted in all provinces except Yunnan Province and malaria incidence further reduced in other areas. [...]no malaria cases had been reported for four consecutive years in 1687 out of 2858 (59.03%) malaria-endemic counties, cities and districts in the country by 2009. The primary lessons learnt from the national control programme in 1950–2009 have been summarized in the following aspects: (i) high commitment by government at all levels with coordinating resources, including financial and human resources to be sustainably invested in national malaria control programmes; (ii) robust working mechanism to promote the actions on multi-sectoral, multi-regional and multi-disciplinary cooperation, which ensure the activities performed in time; (iii) innovative researches produced rich tools used in the national malaria control programmes, including updating the strategies in different control phases and developing new chemotherapy drugs and schemes, diagnostics, surveillance kits and schemes, insecticide-treated bed-nets, and ways for information-education-communication; (iv) deep integration between western medicine and Chinese traditional medicine allowed the Chinese Nobel Prize winner Tu Youyou to discover artemisinin which contributed significantly to saving life of world population; (v) active communities involvement to modify mosquito habitats and improve sanitation through patriotic public health campaign; (vi) international cooperation and communication to ensure all steps in control activities along with international standards.