Data and Statistics on Malaria in the United States
Cited in 3 Likelier entries (2 risks, 1 decision).
Used in 3 entries
For each citing entry, the verbatim excerpt and Likelier's calculation notes (how the source's number was converted to the lifetime-probability framing) are shown below. Click through to read the full claim ledger.
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- Statistic
~2,000 US malaria cases reported per year; average of nearly 7 deaths per year over 2007–2022; 95% of US malaria patients did not take appropriate malaria prevention medication.
“"Approximately 2,000 malaria cases a year are reported in the United States, and on average there were nearly 7 deaths per year for the period 2007–2022. … 95% of people with malaria did not take appropriate malaria prevention medication."”
Calculation notes
CDC domestic surveillance anchors the “prophylaxis works” claim: 95% of confirmed US cases are in travelers who did not take appropriate prevention, which implies prophylaxis compliance drops risk by roughly an order of magnitude or more relative to no prevention (exact reduction varies by regimen, destination, and adherence). The ~7 deaths / ~2,000 cases ratio gives a US case-fatality rate of ~0.35% with access to wealthy-country critical care — consistent with the ~0.5% figure for treated P. falciparum in high-income health systems used in the body text.
Independence note: CDC Yellow Book and CDC Malaria Surveillance share CDC as publisher, but they are distinct pipelines: the Yellow Book is clinical guidance synthesized from travel-medicine literature and NMSS, while the surveillance report is the raw NMSS case and mortality count. We treat them as corroborating rather than independent.
Source date: 2024-01-01 · Accessed: 2026-04-11
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- Statistic
~2,000 US malaria cases reported per year; average of nearly 7 deaths per year over 2007–2022; 95% of US cases are in people who did not take appropriate prevention medication.
“"Approximately 2,000 malaria cases a year are reported in the United States, and on average there were nearly 7 deaths per year for the period 2007–2022. … Most cases are in people who contract malaria while traveling to another country where malaria spreads and return to the U.S. 95% of people with malaria did not take appropriate malaria prevention medication."”
Calculation notes
CDC US surveillance gives the non-endemic anchor: ~7 malaria deaths per year in a country of ~335 million, almost entirely in returning travelers. That is ~2 × 10⁻⁸ per person per year, i.e. roughly 1 in a million over 60 adult years. This is the basis for the "United States / Europe / Australia" row of regional_breakdown and for the 0.1× personal-factor multiplier for non-endemic travelers on prophylaxis. Methodologically independent of WHO.
Independence note: CDC surveillance (ICD-coded US death certificates + NMSS case reports) is drawn from a completely different pipeline than WHO’s programmatic malaria estimates, so this is meaningfully independent corroboration of the near-zero risk for non-endemic residents.
Source date: 2024-01-01 · Accessed: 2026-04-11
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Approximately 2,000 US malaria cases are reported per year with an average of nearly 7 deaths per year over 2007-2022; 95% of US malaria patients did not take appropriate malaria prevention medication. Per CDC MMWR Malaria Surveillance 2018: 1,823 confirmed cases, 13.8% classified as severe malaria illness, 988 (62.8%) of uncomplicated cases hospitalized, 235 (94.0%) of severe cases hospitalized, 85.0% of imported cases originated from Africa
“"Approximately 2,000 malaria cases a year are reported in the United States, and on average there were nearly 7 deaths per year for the period 2007-2022. 95% of people with malaria did not take appropriate malaria prevention medication. From MMWR Malaria Surveillance United States 2018: CDC received 1,823 confirmed malaria cases with onset of symptoms in 2018; seven persons died from malaria; 95.0% of US-resident cases did not adhere to or did not take a CDC-recommended chemoprophylaxis regimen; 1,519 (85.0%) were imported cases that originated from Africa; 251 (13.8%) were classified as severe malaria illness; 988 (62.8%) of uncomplicated cases were hospitalized for their illness; 235 (94.0%) of severe cases were hospitalized."”
Calculation notes
CDC US Malaria Surveillance + CDC MMWR Malaria Surveillance United States 2018 (Mace KE, Lucchi NW, Tan KR. MMWR Surveill Summ 2022;71(SS-8):1-35). Federal government primary surveillance — the authoritative US data on which the action-vs-inaction asymmetry hangs. The 95% "did not take appropriate prevention" figure quantifies how heavily US imported-malaria morbidity sits on the inaction side: roughly 1,900 of the ~2,000 annual cases are in travelers who could have taken prophylaxis but didn't. The 13.8% severe- malaria rate and 62.8% hospitalization rate for uncomplicated cases anchor the severity-of-consequence side of the post-illness regret calculation — most US malaria cases that result from skipping prophylaxis end up in hospital, which is exactly the consequence-severity threshold above which the Ioannou et al. 2022 hospitalized-skipper regret proxy applies (~65% post-illness regret).
Source date: 2024-01-01 · Accessed: 2026-05-24
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