The past, present and future of global malaria and neglected tropical diseases: a disease burden assessment from 1990 to 2030.

INTRODUCTION

The World Health Organization (WHO) plans to control the epidemics of malaria and neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) by 2030. The aim of this study was to evaluate the realizability of achieving the WHO targets by assessing the past, present, and future global disease burden of malaria and NTDs.

METHODOLOGY: Joinpoint regression, Spearman's correlation, and the autoregressive integrated moving average model (ARIMA) were used to estimate the trends of malaria and NTDs from 1990 to 2030 based on the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study 2019.

RESULTS

Western Sub-Saharan Africa had the highest cases of malaria and NTDs in 2019, with one-half of the global cases. The age-standardized incidence rate (ASIR) in high socio-demographic index (SDI) and World Bank high-income regions showed upward trends from 1990 to 2019. The highest burden of NTDs was dengue in 2019, and the ASIR of dengue showed an obvious upward trend from 1990 to 2019. Children (< 5 years) had the most serious disease burden of malaria and NTDs from 1990 to 2019. The predicted results showed that the age-standardized mortality rate of malaria and NTDs worldwide had a slow upward trend from 2020 to 2030.

CONCLUSIONS

This analysis emphasizes that the control of malaria and NTDs in western sub-Saharan Africa should be continuously strengthened and the resurgence of malaria and NTDs in high SDI and World Bank high-income regions needs to be highlighted. Dengue and children (< 5 years) are the primary diseases and populations of concern, respectively, for future prevention efforts.