Bangladesh has halved the number of malaria cases in the past seven years, but cross-border transmission poses a "new challenge" in eradicating the mosquito-borne disease by 2030, officials say.

About 85,000 patients were identified with malaria in 2008 but the number fell to nearly 40,000 in 2015. The number of deaths dropped to nine from 154, according to the government's malaria control programme.

"But prevalence in neighbouring Myanmar and cross-border movement has appeared as a new challenge," said Dr Muktadir Kabir, malaria programme head of BRAC, which implements government programmes.

Director General for Health Services Prof Deen Muhammad Nurul Haque agreed at a roundtable in Dhaka o­n Tuesday. "If we cannot solve the cross-border issue, it would be difficult to get to 'zero' by 2030," he said.

Health Minister Mohammed Nasim, however, sounded optimistic, and said "Bangladesh would surely be malaria-free o­ne day."

NGO BRAC and the government's malaria-control programme organised the discussion jointly with Bangla daily 'Samakal'.

Representatives of different NGOs working with malaria, WHO and government doctors attended.

Malaria is endemic to some districts of Bangladesh with a high prevalence in the hilly areas next to Myanmar.

WHO says the movement of malaria across international borders poses a major obstacle to achieving malaria elimination in many countries committed to this goal.

Officials said the prevalence of the disease in border areas was often higher than in other places due to inadequate health services and people's attitude.

They also highlighted the difficulties in taking prevention programmes to hard-to-reach communities inhabiting difficult terrain and the problems posed by a constant movement of people across porous national boundaries.

Dr Uday Shankar Chakma, Bandarban civil surgeon, said despite malaria's steady decline since 2008, there was a spike in 2014 "due to a rise in border Myanmar areas".

A WHO expert o­n malaria, Dr Qamar Rezwan, termed Bangladesh's malaria programme 'successful', but cautioned against drug-resistance malaria spreading in different parts of the world.

"It (drug-resistance) has been detected in Myanmar also. So far, we have not found it in Bangladesh. If it comes, we'll be in deep trouble. We don't have drugs to treat them."

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