Myanmar ministers and opposition leaders agree plan to eliminate malaria by 2030

An “unprecedented” meeting of organisations from Myanmar has agreed the first stages of an ambitious plan to eliminate malaria from the country by 2030.

Three Myanmar government ministries—health, defence, and foreign affairs—met representatives of three of Myanmar’s ethnic minority communities and of the main opposition party, the National League for Democracy, at a conference held at the University of Maryland on 3 August.

The meeting came in the wake of gene sequencing research showing the emergence in Myanmar of malaria parasites with mutations making them resistant to the main treatment for the disease, artemisinin.1 It …