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The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) says Suri­name has be­came the first coun­try in the Ama­zon re­gion to re­ceive malar­ia-free cer­ti­fi­ca­tion fol­low­ing near­ly 70 years of com­mit­ment by the gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of the  Dutch-speak­ing Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­try to elim­i­nate the dis­ease across its vast rain­forests and di­verse com­mu­ni­ties.

“WHO con­grat­u­lates Suri­name on this re­mark­able achieve­ment,” said Dr Tedros Ad­hanom Ghe­breye­sus, WHO Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al.

“This cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is a pow­er­ful af­fir­ma­tion of the prin­ci­ple that every­one, re­gard­less of na­tion­al­i­ty, back­ground, or mi­gra­tion sta­tus, de­serves uni­ver­sal ac­cess to malar­ia di­ag­no­sis and treat­ment. Suri­name’s stead­fast com­mit­ment to health eq­ui­ty serves as an in­spi­ra­tion to all coun­tries striv­ing for a malar­ia-free fu­ture,” he added.