Malaria deserves more attention

Saturday, May 15, 2010 (The Mirror Pg 13)

By Rebecca Kwei
Malaria received a lot of attention and visibility recently when the world celebrated World Malaria Day on April 25.
Series of activities such as workshops, radio and TV programmes, donation of Insecticide Treated Nets (ITNs) by various organisations among others heralded the celebration.
While the day afforded us the opportunity to ponder anew on strategies to eliminate this disease which according the World Health Organisation (WHO) kills more than a million people annually, of much concern to most people is that issues of malaria will not be relegated to the background after the celebrations.
Despite the fact that malaria is preventable and treatable, the WHO estimates that more that 80 per cent of deaths due to malaria occurs in Sub-Saharan Africa, mostly among children under five years and pregnant women.
Malaria also impacts on all the eight goals of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) so the MDGs cannot be attained if malaria is not eliminated.
Although there are many interventions including control, preventive and research activities to contain the disease, last year in Ghana, 3,600,000 cases of malaria were recorded at the Out Patients Department while 3,900 deaths due to malaria were also recorded within the same period.
But the optimistic Programme Manager of the National Malaria Control Programme, Dr Constance Bart-Plange, sees a silver lining in the clouds.
"The story is not so gloomy since the country was making progress in the fight against malaria. There have been a drastic reduction in deaths due to malaria in the country and the World Health Organisation had estimated that between 2003 to 2009, 20,000 lives of children under five years would be saved" she told a group of journalists at a day's workshop organised by African Media and Malaria Research Network (AMMREN) in Accra.
Of much concern to Dr Bart-Plange was for all fevers to be properly diagnosed to ascertain whether it was malaria or not and for malaria to be properly treated with artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) and also for every Ghanaian to sleep under ITNs.
Other interventions to control malaria are indoor residual spraying, environmental management, Sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) to prevent malaria in pregnant women and targeted larviciding.
Another breakthrough is the development of the vaccines such as the RTS,S which is currently the most clinically advanced malaria vaccine candidate in the world.
Additionally, the INDEPTH Effectiveness and Safety Studies (INESS) will examine in real life the safety and effectiveness of anti-malarials in many districts in four African countries including Ghana.
Furthermore, initiative known as the Affordable Medicines Facility - Malaria (AMFm) is being introduced to ensure that people suffering from malaria have access to inexpensive, effective anti-malarial treatment in the form of ACTs.
Clearly, there are a lot of interventions to prevent and control malaria but for the fight against malaria to be won, a lot also depends on the amount of resources African leaders commit to it and as the Executive Secretary of AMMREN, Mrs Charity Binka notes, the commitment of African leaders in the fight against malaria is very key.
At a summit in Abuja, Nigeria, on April 25, 2000, African heads of state and governments among others committed to halve the malaria mortality for Africans by 2010, through implementing the strategies and actions for Roll Back Malaria, agreed at the summit.
For Mrs Binka, it was important for people to impress upon leadership to show commitment to the Abuja declaration so that the resolutions of that summit does not remain on paper.
"The big question is can we by the end of this year be able to proudly say that the targets to reduce malaria morbidity by half and malaria mortality by half have been achieved? asked Mrs Binka.
"Yes, we can with commitment on the part of leaders. African governments must stand up and be counted as we enter the next phase to kick out malaria from the continent. They must not fail us", she adds.