The Progress Towards National Malaria Elimination: The Experience of Oman

Despite a significant reduction in the global case incidence and mortality of malaria in the past 20 years, malaria continues to wreak havoc on people's health across the globe. Oman is a malaria-free country, meeting the World Health Organization's (WHO) criteria, having no indigenous malaria case documented since 2010, and maintaining that status for three consecutive years. Oman has a national strategy for prevention of re-establishment of malaria and to maintain their malaria-free status. In this paper, we explore Oman's malaria elimination progress and provide recommendations for accelerating and sustaining malaria free status using WHO malaria elimination strategies.

Secondary data from the years 1976 to 2020 was extracted from official sources utilized to assess progress. A review and epidemiological analysis of malaria cases, species classification, and source of infection was conducted. The data and situation were compared to WHO malaria elimination pillars.

The number of malaria cases reported from 1976 to 2020 was 298 070, a decline from 1.6 to 0.1 per 1000 population. Of the 4415 cases reported between 1994-2004, 98.0% were classified as imported and 73.0% of people diagnosed with malaria were 20-34 years old. The number of autochthonous cases began to decline in 1994 from a high of 4415 cases (3.6 per 1000 population) to zero by 2004 with no deaths attributed to autochthonous malaria cases after the year 2000. By 2020, Plasmodium falciparum accounted for 86.0% of cases, P. vivax cases declined to 9.0% and P. malaria and P. ovale comprised the remaining 6.0% of case notifications.

Oman achieved malaria elimination status in 2013. To maintain this status, it is essential to adopt a national prevention strategy of re-establishment of malaria and maintain malaria-free status targets.