Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government on Tuesday signed MoUs with the US-based Malaria No More (MNM) and India's Malaria Elimination Trust (MET) to rid the state of the vector-borne disease.

Though there has already been a decline of 84 per cent in the average number of malaria cases compared to last year, malaria is yet to be eliminated from the state.

The MNM works for a malaria-free world, while the MET strives to lessen the burden of the disease on the country. Health minister Pratap Jena said: "Because of the state government's initiatives, malaria cases have gone down over the years. The objective of signing the MoU is to create awareness about the best practices to prevent malaria in the state."

He said: "The objective of the MoU is to make the state malaria free and create awareness about the best practices to prevent disease."

Health secretary P.K. Meherda and other senior officials were present during signing of the MoU.

Officials said both the organisations would help the state government in planning various programmes and executing them.

"Besides, we will focus on creating public awareness and establishing a coordination between various government and non-government organisations," an official said.

The state government has launched the Rs 120crore Durgama Anchalare Malaria Nirakaran (DAMAN) programme last year in high-malaria endemic districts.

Under the programme, the state government has so far distributed 1.13 crore medicated mosquito nets.

A health department official claimed that because of the distribution of medicated nets, it had been able to reduce cases of malaria.

A state health department press release said that 3,95,004 cases were detected in 2014 and 89 people had died. In 2015, 4,36,792 malaria cases were reported and In 2016, there were 77 malaria deaths.

Last year the death toll had dropped to 24, while the number of malaria cases was 3,52,140. This year, only two deaths have been reported.