In a report released Tuesday by the World Health Organization, experts said they only managed to reduce malaria by 17 per cent since 2000. Last year, there were about 216 million cases of malaria worldwide, with about 81 per cent of those in Africa, mostly in children under five.
But those figures come with a big margin of error since WHO did not have enough data for more than two dozen African countries to accurately track malaria's spread.
Dr. Robert Newman, director of WHO's malaria program, said it is disappointing not to have reduced malaria by 50 per cent by last year. But, he said, it was "truly significant progress" that the parasitic disease's death rates fell by more than one-third in Africa.
He described the current goal of cutting malaria deaths to "near zero" by the end of 2015 as "aspirational," but added that it wouldn't be accomplished unless every person at risk has access to a bed net and suspected cases are properly diagnosed and treated. Newman also said it would cost US$6 billion a year -- about three times more than the world currently spends -- to be successful.
"It is unacceptable that people continue to die from malaria for lack of a $5 bed net, a 50 cent diagnostic test and a $1 anti-malarial treatment," Newman said in an email.
Some experts questioned if WHO should be setting such lofty goals, especially at a time of declining funding.
"I understand why people want these big, audacious targets, but it may undermine malaria (control) in the long term," said Richard Tren, director of the non-profit Africa Fighting Malaria.
Despite difficulties in compiling the statistics, there is a clear, and welcome, downward trend in deaths. It is estimated that malaria killed 655,000 people in 2010, compared to 800,000 in 2004.
"It is remarkable progress," said Dr Cibulskis. "When I began working in the malaria field in Africa we were fighting a losing battle. Now all that has changed and the risk of dying from malaria has fallen by a third in a decade."
The improvement is down to several factors. A total of 145 million long-lasting insecticide-treated nets were delivered to sub-Saharan Africa last year, a huge increase on 2009. Spraying the walls of homes with insecticide is another effective means of reducing malaria.
Once infected, it is vital that treatment begins quickly. Rapid diagnostic tests are being increasingly used. These detect the presence of malaria parasites in the blood, often via a simple finger-prick test.
The use of artemisinin-based combination therapies has transformed the treatment of the disease in the past decade.
Children who are seriously ill can make a dramatic and rapid recovery after just a couple of days of taking the drug.
There continue to be worrying signs of drug resistance, first confirmed on the Cambodia-Thailand border in 2009 and now suspected in Burma and Vietnam.
To reduce the chances of drug resistance spreading it is vital that artemisinin-based treatments are giving in combination, and yet 25 countries - most in Africa - still allow the marketing of monotherapies. The WHO says most of the manufacturers are in India.
There are promising indications from trials of a vaccine against malaria, but this will be only part of the solution to tackling this preventable infection.
There are concerns about the global funding of malaria control which is expected to peak at $2bn this year and fall to $1.5bn in 2015. The UK government is notable among donors in that its support is pledged to increase in the coming years.
Malaria remains a major public health threat. Nine out of 10 deaths are in Africa and the vast majority are children under five.
Four countries - Armenia, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Turkmenistan - have been certified free of malaria since 2007. But around more than three billion people in around 100 countries remain at risk. The battle against malaria has a long way to go.
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