Egypt has been certified malaria-free by the World Health Organization (WHO) - an achievement hailed by the UN public health agency as truly historic. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says Malaria is as old as Egyptian civilization itself, but the disease that plagued pharaohs now belongs to its history. Egyptian authorities launched their first efforts to stamp out the deadly mosquito-borne infectious disease nearly 100 years. Certification is granted when a country proves that the transmission chain is interrupted for at least the previous three consecutive years. Malaria kills at least 600,000 people every year, nearly all of them in Africa. The WHO praised "the Egyptian government and people" for their efforts to "end a disease that has been present in the country since ancient times".