Image: A community volunteer conducts a malaria rapid diagnostic test at a home in southeastern Myanmar. (CPI)
When Naw Pat’s youngest son fell ill at the family’s hillside farm, she first reached for the medicine she kept at home. It did not work. His fever turned out to be malaria, and his case is far from rare. To understand malaria in Myanmar today, you can start with Naw Pat’s family.
“When my child first became sick, he took the medicine we had at home, but he didn’t improve,” she said. So she turned to her village’s community volunteer. “That’s why I went to the community volunteer’s home and requested a malaria test.” The volunteer tested the whole family. Among them, only the three-year-old tested positive. The volunteer then prescribed a 14-day course of treatment.
Naw Pat’s family had not always lived here. “We came to this area after fleeing from the fighting in our home village,” she said. “We feared for our safety and hid in the forest.” Because conflict uprooted them, they ended up in a malaria zone. Her story captures a hard truth: a disease that had been nearly eliminated in many areas of Myanmar is returning.
Globally, the data from 2024 and 2025 reveal uneven progress on malaria. Better bed nets and new vaccines prevented more than 170 million cases and one million deaths. Moreover, several countries reached a milestone. Several countries, including Egypt, Suriname and Timor-Leste, earned malaria-free certification.
Still, the disease remains a serious threat. WHO estimates more than 280 million cases and over 600,000 deaths in 2024. That figure marks a slight rise over the previous year. Malaria in Myanmar, by contrast, took a far more dangerous turn.
The story of malaria in Myanmar shows how fast progress can be made, and how quickly it can unravel. Between 2012 and 2020, the country made extraordinary gains. The number of confirmed cases fell by almost 88%. Meanwhile, reported deaths dropped by 98%. By 2020, officials attributed only 10 deaths to the disease. This progress flowed from a coordinated strategy and steady investment.
The stakes reached well beyond the country’s borders. Myanmar is a hotspot of multidrug-resistant malaria. Therefore, controlling those strains protects people worldwide, especially as climate change widens the range of malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
But, since 2021, conflict and instability have spread across much of the country and continue to intensify. More than 3.6 million people have fled their homes, many of them into forested areas, where malaria spreads more easily. Medical supply chains have come under pressure as systems have broken down and transport routes have become unsafe.
The numbers confirm the shift. The WHO reported a sevenfold increase in cases in Myanmar between 2019 and 2022. Other figures suggest a tenfold increase in eastern Myanmar between 2020 and 2023. In 2025, Community Partners International’s (CPI) local partners conducted more than 465,000 rapid diagnostic tests. More than one in seven (14.6%) came back positive. Back in 2020, that positivity rate sat close to zero.
Nan Win, a project officer, oversees 30 villages in southeastern Myanmar with a team of five field facilitators. She has watched the change firsthand. “In the past, we would see one or two malaria cases per year. Now, we often find cases,” she said. The shift is not only in volume. It also touches who falls ill. “What used to be found predominantly among visitors is now also identified among local villagers.”
Furthermore, the disease has grown more complex. “In 2023, we even encountered a patient with mixed malaria, which we had never seen before,” she said. Mixed infections combine two parasites. As a result, they make treatment harder and diagnosis more urgent.
The link between displacement and infection is direct. Uprooted people often shelter or work in forests and on highland farms. There, mosquito exposure runs high, and nets are scarce. In one village, community volunteer Nan Aye sees the pattern repeat. “Many people who are prone to malaria in this area often do not sleep under mosquito nets,” she said. “Also, some people live in the forest.” Such patients are also hard to follow. “Most infected individuals tend to return to the border areas, making it difficult to track their outcomes properly,” she said.
Children carry much of the burden. Naw Myint, a volunteer who started in 2025, finds the youngest most at risk. “I find that children are more likely to be infected with malaria,” she said. Many of them travel with parents to forest and highland farms. Those trips can last days or even months. The youngest patient she has treated was two years old.
The barriers keep stacking up. Funding is tight, fuel is scarce, and medicines and supplies are hard to obtain. “It’s difficult to import insecticide-treated mosquito nets, and our funding is very limited,” Nan Win said. Consequently, villagers keep asking for nets that her team cannot supply.
“There is a shortage of health workers,” she continues. “Transporting medicines has become increasingly difficult. We can’t even get paracetamol easily. Frequent power cuts make it harder to store medicines safely.”
Monitoring has suffered too. Her teams once reached all 30 villages every month. “Now we find it challenging to visit even once every three months due to fuel shortages and security concerns on the roads,” she said.
For Saw Bo Bo, a field assistant with a second partner, the conflict in the Middle East has impacted fuel supplies. “We are forced to buy fuel on the black market at 15,000 kyats [$3.6 at the time of writing] per liter,” he said. The price runs far above normal. Meanwhile, the collapse of formal services makes the work both harder and more vital. “Since 2021, many hospitals and clinics have closed,” he said.
Trust anchors the response to malaria in Myanmar. CPI supports mesh networks of local organizations embedded in the communities they serve. Because they belong there, they reach at-risk populations that outside agencies cannot. Their community health workers teach families about the disease. They also distribute supplies, run rapid tests, and link suspected cases to care.
“The community’s trust and cooperation are strong,” Saw Bo Bo said. Village leaders and elders open doors. Steady education then shifts understanding. “They now recognize that malaria is caused by mosquito bites, rather than eating bananas or drinking water from the mountains,” he said.
That trust shows up in small, decisive moments. Because Naw Pat knew where to turn, her son got tested and treated early. He finished his medicine and recovered. Multiply that across hundreds of villages and hundreds of thousands of tests. The result is the line between a contained disease and an uncontrolled one.
The future of malaria in Myanmar depends on sustaining that reach. Communities need more health workers in affected villages. They also need reliable supply lines and prevention tools for the people most exposed. Above all, the volunteers stand ready. Naw Myint began, in her words, “motivated by a desire to help those in my community who lack access to healthcare services.” So people keep coming to her door, and she keeps testing.
Community Partners International (CPI) strengthens, equips and connects local organizations in Myanmar, Bangladesh and Thailand providing health and humanitarian services to conflict- and poverty-affected communities.
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