They warn of a significant threat of people contracting both, particularly in Africa, which has 94% of malaria deaths.

Professor Colin Sutherland of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine says with heightened awareness of COVID 19, the high fever associated with malaria could be confused with coronavirus.

This could result in malaria patients being incorrectly sent to COVID 19 treatment centers where their true illness could be missed in the vital three-day window for effective malaria treatment.

Dr Francis Kimani of the Kenya Medical Research Institute says advances made against malaria could be reversed if scarce resources were re-directed to treating the COVID 19 pandemic.

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Malaria last year killed 380 million people – mostly in Africa.

In the first 14 years of this century, the number of malaria deaths dropped by 40 percent because of medical advances and the reduction  mosquito breeding sites.

Since 2014, however, the fatalities have persistently approached 400 000 a year.

Because of the complexities of the disease, there is no commercially available vaccine and the parasite develops immunity to prophylactics rendering them useless.

Scientists insist that there can be no let up in the battle against malaria which has to continue in parallel with the fight against COVID 19.

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It expects COVID 19-related unemployment to slash a fifth of this financial economic lifeline crucial to vulnerable communities.

The remittances sent home by Third World citizens working in wealthy countries is three times larger than the  global development aid given by those countries.

The World Bank says COVID 19 economic difficulties has caused a drop of $110 billion in remittances this year.

This  will bring it  down 20 percent to below $450-billion.

For example, remittances from Britain to Africa are down 80%, while remittances from Italy to Africa are down 90%.

This as the United Nations University predicts an increase in global poverty for the first time since 1990.

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