'The findings indicate that the impact of malaria has been greatly underestimated, and that it may outstrip HIV-AIDS as the world's deadliest infectious disease,' said The Times, London.
The study, which is one of the most comprehensive efforts to map the prevalence of malaria, shows that over half a billion people could have the disease. This elevated count could increase pressure on governments to pump money into prevention efforts, the article said.
Malaria, which is caused by a mosquito-borne parasite, is one of the world's biggest infectious killers. But it has been tough to figure out exactly how many people succumb to the disease, Nature said
Earlier estimates relied to some extent on health clinics that voluntarily report their cases. But this can be inaccurate because many people with malaria do not go to clinics - and many clinics do not submit figures, said Nature.
In the new study, published in Nature, Robert Snow at the Wellcome Trust Research Laboratories in Nairobi, Kenya, and his colleagues created a computer model to build a detailed world map showing how many people are likely to be experiencing malaria symptoms.
'The researchers reckon that there were around 515 million clinical cases of malaria in 2002, although the actual figure could lie anywhere between 300 and 660 million.
'This is not far off double the estimate of 273 million cases produced by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1998. And in areas outside Africa, the new figures are at least three times as high as those previously estimated by the WHO,' said Nature.