"With a plastic case full of cheap medical supplies and only a few days’ training, Say Mu Phaw is on the verge of eliminating malaria from her village in south-eastern Myanmar’s Tanintharyi region. Back in 2015, her first full year as a village health worker, 16 people came down with the disease in Mi Kyaung Hlaung, where roughly 600 residents live surrounded by mosquito-ridden tropical forests. Last year, armed with latex gloves, lancets and a supply of disposable malaria testing kits, she diagnosed just one villager despite testing 250 people. Before she started work, most of her neighbours had only a vague idea of what malaria was and how to prevent it. “Now, whenever they see symptoms, they’ll approach me first rather than the other way round,” she says. Say Mu Phaw is one of thousands of volunteers across the country to have received training and supplies from foreign donors since political reforms began at the start of this decade, ushering in a flood of aid. Their efforts have helped save thousands of lives, and are fast turning Myanmar from a malaria black spot into a world leader in the fight to eliminate the disease. Across the country, almost 4,000 people died from malaria in 2010, according to World Health Organization (WHO) estimates. In 2017, the disease claimed just over 200 lives..."