Malaria death rates have plunged by 60% since 2000, translating into 6.2 million lives saved, the vast majority of them children, according to a joint WHO-UNICEF report released today. The report – “Achieving the malaria MDG target” – shows that the malaria MDG target to “have halted and begun to reverse the incidence” of malaria by 2015, has been met “convincingly”, with new malaria cases dropping by 37% in 15 years. Global malaria control is one of the great public health success stories of the past 15 years. An increasing number of countries are on the verge of eliminating malaria. In 2014, 13 countries reported zero cases of the disease and 6 countries reported fewer than 10 cases. The fastest decreases were seen in the Caucasus and Central Asia, which reported zero cases in 2014, and in Eastern Asia.