The World Health Organization said progress has been made fighting Malaria since 2000 but the disease still kills 1 million people yearly.

An increasing number of people are using malaria prevention and treatment services but more needs to be done to keep the disease in check, according to the 2005 World Malaria Report from WHO and the United Nations Children’s Fund - the most comprehensive attempt to date to collect information on the global burden of the disease.

At present Malaria remains the infectious disease that takes more lives of children in Africa than any other - three times as many as HIV infection, wrote Ann M. Veneman, UNICEF executive director.

If we are going to dramatically reduce child deaths in the next decade, we need to put more focus on combating malaria.

An increasing number of countries offer the newest malaria medications and more people have received mosquito nets impregnated with long-lasting insecticide, the report said.

Is too early to know what affect these improvements are having, however, because reliable information on malaria is difficult to obtain in affected countries, the report noted.