David Byrne in Reasons to be Cheerful:
At the end of June, the World Health Organization certified China as having eliminated malaria. The announcement may have gotten a little drowned out by the mass spectacles surrounding the Communist Party’s 100th birthday, but make no mistake: going from 30 million cases annually to zero really is a reason to be cheerful.
There are a lot of places that would like to emulate China — malaria is one of the top public health threats around the world, with 200 million cases and 400,000 deaths per year. And while a number of other countries are malaria-free — most recently El Salvador, Algeria, Argentina, Paraguay and Uzbekistan — many more are eager to know how the Chinese did it.
The scope of China’s achievement is hard to overstate.
More here.