Egypt has been declared malaria free. The World Health Organisation has called the achievement "truly historic". "Malaria is as old as Egyptian civilisation itself, but the disease that plagued pharaohs now belongs to its history and not its future," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
Genetic evidence of malaria has been found in Tutankhamun and other ancient Egyptian mummies; with this the disease can be traced back as far as 4000 BC.