Prof Elspeth Webb’s assessment of the risk of malaria to those coming to Rwanda is exaggerated (Letters, 21 April). Rwanda has a comprehensive and extraordinarily effective malaria-prevention and response programme, which has achieved one of the fastest-recorded decelerations in malaria transmission in history: severe cases dropped from 13,844 to 1,831 between 2016 and 2022. This is an almost 87% reduction of cases.
Every resident of Rwanda is within 1km of a community case-management-system centre, which means that 70% of malaria diagnosis and treatment is provided rapidly at the community level. Everyone living in Rwanda, including asylum seekers, has full access to this healthcare, and to preventive and curative antimalarials.
