COLOMBIA: Malaria Winning the Battle in Chocó
By Constanza Vieira and Diana Cariboni*
QUIBDÓ, Colombia , Nov 3 (Tierramérica) - The Atrato River is "full of malaria", according to a dozen men in rubber boots, standing in the water that has inundated the village of Tanguí, in Colombia's north-western jungle.
It is the fifth flood this year, and the rice harvest is ruined. The men stand in a semi-circle with their arms crossed to talk with Tierramérica. The 120 families of Tanguí live two and three families in each of the stilt houses.
We travel down the street by canoe. Children play happily in the stagnant water. There are no nurses: the health brigades come "every once in awhile" and only because the governor sends them: "He's a friend of the mayor," says one of the men.
Quibdó, capital of the department (province) of Chocó, is a half-hour by boat from Tanguí. Situated in the heart of this tropical rainforest, it is ideal for the mosquitoes that carry malaria. Heavy rainfall occurs nearly every day. For the people of the area, life takes place along the rivers.
In the context of the decades-long Colombian civil war, many who flee the fighting in infested areas carry malaria with them.
According to the non-governmental Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement, between 1999 and 2006, nearly 70,000 people were displaced in Chocó, whose population is about 800,000.
"Malaria hasn't diminished. And we are facing problems of small outbreaks, including in areas where it hadn't presented in two or three years," José Dolores Palacios, technician with the Chocó Health Secretariat's transmissible disease prevention programme, told Tierramérica.
There are 58 cases in communities along the Bebará River, in the municipality of Medio Atrato; more than 90 in Managrú, seat of Cantón de San Pablo; and more than 50 in Bellavista, 228 kilometres north of Quibdó, where there was an outbreak "just when the president (Álvaro Uribe) went there" to inaugurate the new town built by the government, on Oct. 13.
As of September of this year, 19,971 cases had been reported in Chocó, and in 2006 there were 12,441, but the 2007 increase is due to previous "under-reporting". The highest numbers were in 1998, with 31,713, an in 2002, with just under 32,000, says Palacios.
Now data-gathering has begun in rural areas, entrusted to 13 experts who diagnose the disease, distribute medications and conduct quality-control of the health posts, says the Chocó health official.
Malaria, caused by plasmodium parasites, which are spread through bites from infected mosquitoes, is preventable and curable. But the disease kills more than one million people a year around the world, mostly in Africa, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Fever, headache, vomiting and shivering are symptoms that can occur 10 days to one month after infection. If it is not treated immediately, it can become deadly.
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