As the world puts together all its resources to fight Covid-19, today being World Malaria day, Nations are reminded that additional efforts need to be put in place to fight other diseases that threaten millions of lives.
Even though enormous strides have been made in the fight of Malaria, the diseases still claims more than 400,000 lives every years. However, it is sub-Saharan Africa that bears the brunt in the number of afflictions from the diseases.
According to World Health Organization’s (WHO) World Malaria Report 2019, 213 million (93 per cent) of cases were in sub-Saharan Africa in 2018 and only 3.4% in south East Asia and 2.1 per cent in eastern Mediterranean Region.
“In many African countries, malaria is the leading cause of hospital visits which exerts unbearable financial pressure on households,” reads a statement by Uhuru Kenyatta, President of Kenya and Chairperson of the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA).
It is for this reason that president Kenyatta through the partnership of WHO commenced a pilot program of a vaccine in Kenya, Ghana and Malawi to stop the disease that kills a child every two minutes. The RTSS vaccine which took 3 decades to develop is administered to children up to two years, an age that is extremely vulnerable to brutal impacts of the disease.
Even though the Vaccine is only one year old in Africa, WHO is confident in its ability to save the 250,000 (67 per cent of total deaths) children who die from the disease every year.
With access to the vaccine still limited, most countries have taken other measures such as use of Insecticides Treated Mosquito Nets (ITNs) and use of preventive anti-malarial medicines.
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“In Kenya, we are continuing to scale up our malaria prevention efforts through the distribution of over 15 million treated mosquito nets this year to cover 25 million vulnerable Kenyans even as we heighten our Covid-19 response,” reads the statement by President Kenyatta.
Although a lot of efforts have been laid by the African nations such as Kenya, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, the report by WHO shows that 40 per cent of pregnant women did not sleep under ITN in 2018 and two thirds did not receive the recommended three or more doses of preventive therapy. This is coupled by the fact that 40 per cent of children suffering from fever are not taken care by a trained medical providers.
Even though the battle with malaria has slowly been won in Africa with the number of deaths reducing from 585,000 in 2010 to 416,000 in 2017 and 405,000 in 2018, the coronavirus pandemic risk becoming a huge obstacle in the fight against malaria. It is this eventuality that WHO worry will roll back progress in the fight against malaria.
“In the worst case scenario, there might be a 75 per cent reduction in access to effective antimalarial medicine which might shoot the total tally of malaria deaths in 2020 to 796,000, twice the number in 2018,” reads a statement from a new modelling analysis by WHO.
“For our continent to win the battle against malaria and indeed the many health challenges we face including the Covid-19 pandemic, we must continue to cultivate close stakeholder collaboration and to invest more political, financial and social resources in our healthcare systems,” reads the statement from President Kenyatta.
Some of the social resources put in place in Kenya include the use of the youth in offering community service in terms of surveillance, health education and advocacy.The WHO has advised malaria affected countries to keep the ball rolling and not to slack in the fight against malaria.
“Do not scale back your planned malaria prevention, diagnostic and treatment activities. If someone living in a place with malaria develops a fever, he or she should seek diagnosis and care as possible, advised Dr. Pedro Alonso,” Director of WHO global Malaria Programme.
“Therefore, as we confront this new global health challenge, we are required to strike a balance between our response to Covid-19 and sustaining our efforts against existing health threats such as malaria. Failing to do so risks creating a situation where an upsurge in malaria cases could overwhelm our already overburdened health systems,” reads President Kenyatta’s statement.
With a total of 29,862 Covid-19 cases as of today, Africa grapples with the stress of juggling between the coronavirus, malaria and the many diseases that were already heavy on the weak and overwhelmed healthcare systems.
According to President Kenyatta, it will need all African Heads of State and other stakeholders to come together in mobilizing resources in order to win the fight against Malaria.
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