The malaria death rate in sub-Saharan Africa has declined by an estimated 57% since 2000, according to new data published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation counted 631,000 in 2015 compared to 1,007,000 deaths in 2000.
The four countries with the highest rates of malaria deaths in 2000 – Burkina Faso, Mali, Sierra Leone and Mozambique – all saw large declines by 2015.
Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates writes in his own blog that encouraging children to sleep under bed nets, spraying insecticide inside homes and on stagnant water and a new drug artemisinin which gets rid of parasites in the bloodstream, could all have contributed.
The researchers also used a new way of mapping malaria, which Mr Gates said can help countries work out where to send health workers.
