Sure, but you also have to remember malaria is much more localized than influenza. The same region of the world that has to deal with regular outbreaks of influenza also has some of the only areas with malaria. (South America and India also have malaria, but I don't know mortality rates.)
People in Europe don't die of malaria. It just doesn't happen. People in Europe do die of influenza, and that is a global problem, but this is a localized disease that kills a half million people a year. Now, this might be just a case of me coincidentally finding stats to back up my argument, but I searched for "malaria deaths africa" and found this graphic:
It looks like Sub-Saharan Africa has about 71% of the worldwide cases and 86% of the worldwide deaths. Concentrated in a population of comparable to the US or the EU - not the world. If these statistics are accurate, the death rate is so much higher it's not comparable to influenza. The top 4 countries, Nigeria, DRC, Uganda and Ethiopia have a higher population than the US, but they also apparently account for half of the malaria deaths.
So it's not like the flu, for the countries with prevalent malaria, it's many, many times worse.
