India committed to eliminating Malaria from the country by 2030 at the 10th East Asia Summit in 2015. The center also compiled two national strategies to combat malaria - The National Framework for Malaria Elimination and The National Strategic Plan for Malaria Elimination. According to the plans, India has showcased a marked decline in Malaria cases by 81.25% with a 59% decline in Malaria related deaths in 2021. Although these figures reported by the Indian Government show tremendous progress, the WHO data has estimated the Malaria cases to be between 2.7 to 5.9 Million in India. This disparity in the estimated and recorded numbers is a major concern for India’s Malaria elimination journey.

One of the primary reasons for such disparity is the inability of private health sectors to diagnose and treat the disease. The India Healthcare system follows a collaborative approach with different Private and Public players, pushing the patients to seek medical care in Private facilities. However, the Private health providers are not solely responsible as there is no centralized reporting system that can collect patient data from both the Public and Private sectors helping in accurate reporting of case tally. 

While both sectors are efficient at treating and maintaining the patient’s diagnosis, an integrated system for data collection is unavailable. Thus, compromising the quality of the data reported by the Government resulted in an inadequate figure showcasing Malaria prevalence in India.

(Source: https://health.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/industry/addressing-gaps-in-malaria-case-notification-key-for-india-to-achieve-elimination/92180209 )