Fresh impetus to beat malaria

AFRICA marked its annual anti-malaria day yesterday with new hope that political will, a cash boost and better treatment and prevention methods may finally overcome one of the continent’s biggest killers.

Poverty, faltering health systems and drug resistance have contributed to the rise of malaria infections over the last 30 years to between 350 million and 500 million cases a year. In some sub-Saharan countries, malaria accounts for up to half of hospital admissions.

Even though the mosquito-borne disease kills about a million people per year – or a child every 30 seconds – and costs African economies an estimated R84 billion, it has for years received little of the attention devoted to another killer, HIV/Aids.

But malaria control has emerged from the shadows into the mainstream, boosting prospects of achieving the target to halve malaria-related deaths by 2015.

US President George W Bush has made combating malaria one of his global health priorities and the US, for the first time, has organised a Malaria Awareness Day. The hit TV show American Idol singled out anti-malaria projects in Africa in a special Idol Gives Back charity show yesterday.

Later this week, explorer Kingsley Holgate will start out from Cape Town on a coast-to-coast trip around the continent called “Africa, the Outside Edge” to give one million mosquito nets to pregnant mothers and young children.

In a policy reversal, WHO last year recommended that more countries use DDT – banned worldwide apart from malaria control because of its environmental damage. The Health Ministry said the number of malaria cases had fallen by 65 percent. and deaths reduced by 73 percent from 85 to 25. — Sapa-AP