WHO certifies Suriname malaria-free

The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) says Suri­name has be­came the first coun­try in the Ama­zon re­gion to re­ceive malar­ia-free cer­ti­fi­ca­tion fol­low­ing near­ly 70 years of com­mit­ment by the gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of the  Dutch-speak­ing Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­try to elim­i­nate the dis­ease across its vast rain­forests and di­verse com­mu­ni­ties.

“WHO con­grat­u­lates Suri­name on this re­mark­able achieve­ment,” said Dr Tedros Ad­hanom Ghe­breye­sus, WHO Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al.

“This cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is a pow­er­ful af­fir­ma­tion of the prin­ci­ple that every­one, re­gard­less of na­tion­al­i­ty, back­ground, or mi­gra­tion sta­tus, de­serves uni­ver­sal ac­cess to malar­ia di­ag­no­sis and treat­ment. Suri­name’s stead­fast com­mit­ment to health eq­ui­ty serves as an in­spi­ra­tion to all coun­tries striv­ing for a malar­ia-free fu­ture,” he added.

The WHO said that as a re­sult a to­tal of 46 coun­tries and one ter­ri­to­ry have been cer­ti­fied as malar­ia-free by WHO, in­clud­ing 12 coun­tries in the Re­gion of the Amer­i­c­as.

“Suri­name did what was need­ed to elim­i­nate malar­ia, de­tect­ing and treat­ing every case quick­ly, in­ves­ti­gat­ing to pre­vent spread, and en­gag­ing com­mu­ni­ties,” said Dr Jar­bas Bar­bosa, Di­rec­tor of the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO), WHO’s re­gion­al of­fice for the Amer­i­c­as.

“This cer­ti­fi­ca­tion re­flects years of sus­tained ef­fort, es­pe­cial­ly reach­ing re­mote ar­eas. It means fu­ture gen­er­a­tions can grow up free from this po­ten­tial­ly dead­ly dis­ease.”

Out­go­ing Suri­name Health Min­is­ter, Dr Amar Ra­mad­hin, said be­ing malar­ia-free means that the pop­u­la­tion is no longer at risk from malar­ia. He said fur­ther­more, elim­i­nat­ing malar­ia will have pos­i­tive ef­fects on the coun­try’s health­care sec­tor, boost the econ­o­my, and en­hance tourism.

“At the same time, we rec­og­nize that main­tain­ing this sta­tus re­quires on­go­ing vig­i­lance. We must con­tin­ue to take the nec­es­sary mea­sures to pre­vent the rein­tro­duc­tion of malar­ia. We are proud that our com­mu­ni­ties are now pro­tect­ed, and we look for­ward to wel­com­ing more vis­i­tors to our beau­ti­ful Suri­name, while re­main­ing ful­ly com­mit­ted to safe­guard­ing these hard-won gains,” he added.

Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of malar­ia elim­i­na­tion is grant­ed by WHO when a coun­try has proven, be­yond rea­son­able doubt, that the chain of in­dige­nous trans­mis­sion has been in­ter­rupt­ed na­tion­wide for at least the pre­vi­ous three con­sec­u­tive years.

Suri­name’s malar­ia con­trol ef­forts be­gan in 1950s in the coun­try’s dense­ly-pop­u­lat­ed coastal ar­eas, re­ly­ing heav­i­ly on in­door spray­ing with the pes­ti­cide DDT and an­ti­malar­i­al treat­ment. By the 1960s, the coastal ar­eas had be­come malar­ia-free and at­ten­tion turned to­wards the coun­try’s forest­ed in­te­ri­or, home to di­verse in­dige­nous and trib­al com­mu­ni­ties.

The WHO said al­though in­door spray­ing was suc­cess­ful in coastal ar­eas, its im­pact was lim­it­ed in the coun­try’s in­te­ri­or due to the preva­lence of tra­di­tion­al open-style homes that of­fer min­i­mal pro­tec­tion against mos­qui­toes.

In 1974 malar­ia con­trol in the in­te­ri­or was de­cen­tralised to Medis­che Zend­ing, Suri­name’s pri­ma­ry health care ser­vice, which re­cruit­ed and trained health­care work­ers from the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties to pro­vide ear­ly di­ag­no­sis and treat­ment.

The surge in min­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly gold min­ing which of­ten in­volves trav­el be­tween malar­ia-en­dem­ic ar­eas, led to in­creas­es in malar­ia, reach­ing a peak of more than 15,000 cas­es in 2001, the high­est trans­mis­sion rates of malar­ia in the Amer­i­c­as.

Since 2005, with sup­port from the Glob­al Fund to Fight AIDS, Tu­ber­cu­lo­sis and Malar­ia, the ca­pac­i­ty to pro­vide di­ag­no­sis was great­ly ex­pand­ed with both im­prove­ments in mi­croscopy and the use of rapid di­ag­nos­tic tests, par­tic­u­lar­ly among mo­bile groups.

Artemisinin-based treat­ments with pri­maquine were in­tro­duced in Suri­name and neigh­bor­ing coun­tries through PA­HO-led stud­ies un­der the Ama­zon Malar­ia Ini­tia­tive (AMI-RAVRE­DA), sup­port­ed by the Unit­ed States. Pre­ven­tion among high-risk groups was al­so strength­ened through the dis­tri­b­u­tion of in­sec­ti­cide-treat­ed nets fund­ed by the Glob­al Fund.

By 2006, malar­ia had dras­ti­cal­ly de­creased among the in­dige­nous pop­u­la­tions, prompt­ing Suri­name to shift its fo­cus to high-risk mo­bile pop­u­la­tions in re­mote min­ing ar­eas. To reach these groups, many of whom were mi­grants from neigh­bor­ing en­dem­ic coun­tries, the coun­try es­tab­lished a net­work of Malar­ia Ser­vice De­liv­er­ers, re­cruit­ed di­rect­ly from the min­ing com­mu­ni­ties. These trained and su­per­vised com­mu­ni­ty work­ers pro­vide free malar­ia di­ag­no­sis, treat­ment, and pre­ven­tion ser­vices, play­ing a vi­tal role in clos­ing ac­cess gaps in hard-to-reach re­gions.

The WHO said through en­sur­ing uni­ver­sal ac­cess to di­ag­no­sis and treat­ment re­gard­less of le­gal sta­tus, de­ploy­ing an ex­ten­sive net­work of com­mu­ni­ty health work­ers, and im­ple­ment­ing na­tion­wide malar­ia screen­ing, in­clud­ing at bor­der cross­ings, Suri­name suc­cess­ful­ly elim­i­nat­ed malar­ia.

It said the last lo­cal­ly trans­mit­ted case of Plas­mod­i­um fal­ci­parum malar­ia was record­ed in 2018, fol­lowed by the fi­nal Plas­mod­i­um vi­vax case in 2021.

The WHO said that the Suri­name gov­ern­ment has shown strong com­mit­ment to malar­ia elim­i­na­tion, in­clud­ing through the Na­tion­al Malar­ia Elim­i­na­tion Task­force, Malar­ia Pro­gramme, Malar­ia Elim­i­na­tion Fund, and cross-bor­der col­lab­o­ra­tion with Brazil, Guyana and French Guiana.

It said that for many years PA­HO/WHO, with the sup­port of the US gov­ern­ment, has pro­vid­ed tech­ni­cal co­op­er­a­tion through­out Suri­name’s an­ti-malar­ia cam­paign. Since 2016 Suri­name al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in the “Elim­i­na­tion 2025” ini­tia­tive – a group of coun­tries iden­ti­fied by WHO as hav­ing the po­ten­tial to elim­i­nate malar­ia by 2025.

“This suc­cess in Suri­name is a demon­stra­tion that malar­ia elim­i­na­tion is pos­si­ble in chal­leng­ing con­texts in the Ama­zon basin and in trop­i­cal con­ti­nen­tal coun­tries. The coun­try’s malar­ia-free cer­ti­fi­ca­tion plays a crit­i­cal role in ad­vanc­ing PA­HO’s Dis­ease Elim­i­na­tion Ini­tia­tive which aims to elim­i­nate more than 30 com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases, in­clud­ing malar­ia, in coun­tries of the Amer­i­c­as by 2030,” the WHO added.

GENE­VA, Jul 1, CMC

CMC/hk/ir/2025