Burkina Faso recorded a 32% decline in malaria cases and a 44% decline in malaria deaths between 2024 and 2025, according to data published by the Malaria Consortium on 15 July 2026. The organisation, which supports the country’s malaria programmes, said deaths among children under five fell by almost 60 percent over the same period. The figures mark progress toward the government’s target of eliminating malaria by 2030.

Officials attributed the decline to several measures used together. These included seasonal drug-based prevention for young children during the rainy season, free distribution of insecticide-treated mosquito nets, indoor spraying of homes and the clearing of mosquito breeding sites. Around 15 million mosquito nets were distributed nationwide in 2025 and communities destroyed more than 2.1 million breeding sites. Two malaria vaccines were also rolled out during this period: the RTS,S vaccine, introduced in more than half of the country’s health districts in 2024, and the R21 vaccine, which extended coverage nationwide the following year.

The decline coincided with the closure of a separate malaria research program. Since 2012, Target Malaria, backed by the Gates Foundation, had worked in Burkina Faso on genetically modified mosquitoes as a possible tool against the country’s malaria burden. The project released modified male mosquitoes designed to reduce the survival or reproduction of malaria-carrying species over time.

Target Malaria, which had received the majority of its $173 million in funding from the Gates Foundation, was shut down by Burkina Faso’s government in August 2025, weeks after its most recent field release of the modified insects. Authorities ordered the destruction of remaining mosquito samples and sealed the programme’s facilities, ending 13 years of research. The closure followed opposition from local activist groups. They said the release of genetically modified mosquitoes could create environmental risks and give foreign-funded actors too much influence over malaria policy. The government referred to these concerns when suspending the programme, but did not release a detailed technical assessment.

Burkina Faso has for years ranked among the ten countries with the highest number of malaria cases and deaths in the world. The country lies in the Sahel, where the rainy season creates conditions that favor mosquito breeding and where health services have often struggled to reach rural populations. Since 2016, armed conflict linked to groups operating across the central Sahel has further limited health access, with WHO reporting that more than one million people had lost access to essential health services by 2020.

Malaria kills nearly 600,000 people worldwide each year. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that the African region, which include Burkina Faso, accounted for about 95% of those deaths, with children under five making up close to three-quarters of deaths in the region. 

Learn more about malaria → “Malaria: will the gains achieved in Africa be lost?”

Learn more about Burkina Faso → “What’s happening in Burkina Faso?”

Children receive anti-malaria drugs at a community health centre in Zitenga, Burkina Faso. (Photo: Dominic Chavez / Flickr/ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.)