HEALTH-AFRICA: Less Spectacular But No Less Deadly Than AIDS

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

HARARE, Apr 30 1998 (IPS) - Africa’s health officials are preparing to step up the fight against a scourge that has received less attention than AIDS but kills more people on the continent than the dreaded Human Immuno-Deficiency Virus (HIV).

“Malaria is the leading health problem in Africa south of the Sahara,” says the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s Regional Director for Africa, Dr Ibrahim Samba. “It is more serious than AIDS.”

The Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), a fatal disease caused by the HIV virus, is devastating much of Africa, but malaria is the biggest killer on the continent.

“Malaria kills two million souls in Africa every year,” Samba told a two-day WHO workshop on the ‘Africa Initiative For Malaria Control In The 21st Century’, which ended here on Apr 30. That figure includes five percent of children under the age of five.

Malaria, a common disease of tropical and subtropical areas, is spread by the anopheles mosquito. Its symptoms are spells of fever and coldness, and it affects more than 400 million worldwide, most of them in Africa, where it is endemic in 42 countries.

Samba said the economic and social consequences of the scourge were very high. He said its direct and indirect cost amounted to more than 800 million US Dollars in 1987 and over two billion dollars in 1997.

The cost is enormous compared to the nine million U.S. dollars the WHO allocated last year for its Malaria Control Programme in Africa, where malaria affects over 300 million people annually.

Despite the lack of resources, the 30 participants — including health ministers from Zimbabwe, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) — called for a coordinated regional approach — involving joint efforts by countries.

“This is also confirmed by past experiences in eradicating malaria in Europe and North America, and significantly controlling malaria in the past in South America, South East Asia and parts of East and Southern Africa,” said a WHO report, made available to IPS on Thursday.

Zimbabwe’s Minister of Health, Dr Timothy Stamps, said it was becoming increasingly hard for countries to fight malaria individually.

He also urged African countries to establish a health information system to enhance their operations. “If you don’t have information,” he said, “it will be hard to fight malaria.”

His view was shared by Ugandan Minister of Health, Dr Chrispas Kiyonga, who said the health authorities in his country were caught by surprise when recent floods unleashed a malaria epidemic in parts of Uganda.

“Due to the weakness of our health information system, we received the information on the outbreak of malaria from newspapers and from local legislators from affected areas,” he recalled.

Supporting the idea of regional co-operation, he said Uganda has been working closely with the DRC, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya and Tanzania. “But,” he added, “the structure is still weak.”

Under its current programme, WHO plans to increase access to effective primary malaria drugs at the community level to 50 percent by 2010 and to 80 percent by 2015.

It says it will also increase the use of insecticide- impregnated bed nets and personal repellants to 50 percent by 2010 and to 80 percent by 2015. It also plans to halve malaria-related deaths by 2010 and reduce them by a further 50 percent by 2015, and it has set a similar timetable for diminishing the socio- economic consequences of the disease.

WHO estimates that the programme’s cost will rise from about 12 million US dollars in 1997/98 to 20 million US dollars in the year 2000 and to about 40 million annually at full take-off in 2005.