In 2015 WHO registered 212 million cases of malaria globally - and 429.000 of these patients died from the disease that year.

The WHO global registrations also show: That roughly 90 percent of all cases of malaria and malaria-deaths are linked to Africa - primarily to a number of poor sub-Saharan countries - and that most malaria deaths occur among infants and children.

Among antimalarians prescribed in 2017 is artemisinin - first described by the Chinese scientist Youyou Tu in 1979 - a feat for which she was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in medicine.

Artemisinin, the active component, is extracted from Chinese wormwood (Artemisia annua), which is now grown commercially for just this purpose.

The drug is very effective, but resistance against it has been detected, e.g. in the boarder region between Cambodia and Vietnam.

People who have been successfully treated for malaria may, in relation to e.g. the type Plasmodium vivax, nevertheless in some instances experience symptoms at a later time - without being re-infected. The explanation for this being that the parasites have left a contagious substance in the person's liver - and this substance can be re-activated.