The UN’s humanitarian agency says Malaria has killed more than 1,800 people in Burundi this year. It said the death toll rivals a deadly Ebola outbreak in neighbouring the Democratic Republic of Congo. In its latest situation report, the agency said, 5.7 million cases of malaria had been recorded in Burundi in 2019, a figure roughly equal to half its entire population.
Of them, more than 1,800 people died from the mosquito-borne disease in the country between January 1 and July 21, the agency said. The tiny country of 11 million people in the African Great Lakes region has still not declared a national emergency, despite the UN’s humanitarian agency saying the outbreak crossed epidemic proportions in May.