More Light on Malaria

I woke up, this morning, to the annoying hum of the tiny terrorist: the mosquito. That is after the insecticide sprayed yesterday before going to sleep. The mosquitoes here now wear gas masks. That could have been funny had it not been that this hummer is also a killer.

^{Image Credit: memecenter.com}


This deadly killer recently appeared to be forgotten for the almighty AIDs/HIV.

The United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) puts the number of AIDS-related deaths in Nigeria per year to be around 180,000 in 2015.

That report can be seen here.

Malaria is caused by bites of the Anopheles mosquitoes harboring the deadly Plasmodium parasites.

Malaria in Africa

According to reports from the World Health Organisation(WHO) here, there are 438,000 deaths globally as a result of malaria.

The African region accounts for 90%, followed by 7% and 2% in South-East Asia and Eastern Mediterranean Region respectively. That easily translates to 394,200 deaths in Africa alone.

To bring this report further home, WHO’s 2015 report estimates about 150,000 deaths and 61,000,000 cases of malaria in Nigeria.That is about 34% of the continent’s cases. That is mind blowing.

As terrifying as that is the effort put on combating malaria is still very small. About 70% of NGO in Nigeria are working on HIV/AIDs awareness leaving only a fraction of NGO working on malaria. I think the fact is that NGOs on HIV/AIDs campaign are more likely to get funds due to it being more deadlier than malaria.

Funding remains inadequate

International and domestic funding for malaria control and elimination totaled US$ 2.5 billion in 2015. Although this represents a significant increase since 2005, it is still well below the US$ 8.7 billion that will be required to achieve global malaria targets 2030.

Prevention

Preventive methods include spraying insecticides, keeping environments free from stagnant water where mosquitoes breed, sleeping under the mosquito nets, etc. But how many of us would want to stay under a mosquito net and sweat all night through in the absence of electricty to power our fans?

Hope?

Last year November WHO announced the World’s first malaria vaccine. It is scheduled to debut in 2018. The vaccine, known as RTS S, targets P.falciparum the deadliest strain of the malaria parasite. There is a recorded partial protection from clinical trials on young children.

Till then Malaria will keep killing one child every 30 seconds, and about 3000 children every day across the world.

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