in collaboration with the Boston Consulting Group
Climate change represents a fundamental threat to human health in the 21st century. Malaria – the world’s most deadly vector-borne disease – is particularly sensitive to variations in climate and weather. Understanding the potential impacts of climate change on malaria transmission and control is thus essential for future planning and preparedness.
This project is a joint exercise by the Malaria Atlas Project (MAP) and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to model potential impacts of climate change on malaria in Africa. The analysis focusses on two forms of the direct effects of climate change: changing transmission patterns attributable to changing parasite and vector ecology; and unmitigated disruptions to malaria control in the aftermath of extreme weather events.
At current levels of malaria control, our analysis suggests climate change could cause more than 550,000 additional malaria deaths by 2050. Over 90% of these additional deaths are predicted to arise from loss of protection following extreme weather.
Increasing coverage malaria control from current levels is essential: but more frequent extreme weather makes high levels of coverage harder to sustain and less effective. Increased suppression means more to lose from any given extreme weather event, and their increased frequency due to climate change could reduce the impact of high coverage by 17%.
The only solution is malaria eradication: this analysis demonstrates that climate change will make this harder the longer we leave it. By 2050 1.3B people in Africa will live in areas where, due to climate change, malaria will be harder to eradicate than it is today.
Current gains in the fight against malaria are fragile, even without considering the impacts of climate change. Investment in climate-resilient health systems and paradigm-shifting new tools is critical to accelerate progress towards eradication.