On Aug. 26. 2019, the World Health Organization announced a vector alert for Anopheles stephensi invasion and spread, a highly competent vector of Plasmodium falciparum and P. vivax, considered an efficient vector of urban malaria.

Until 2011, the reported distribution of An. stephensi was confined to certain countries in South-East Asia and large parts of the Arabian Peninsula. Since then, the vector had been reported from Djibouti (2012), Ethiopia (2016), Sri Lanka (2017) and from the Republic of the Sudan (2019).