Malaria: Africa needs more help
2007-01-16 17:31
Guangzhou - Aid agencies and African states has called for more help on Tuesday to fight malaria, a disease that kills more than a million people each year, 90% of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
A dire shortage of money, infrastructure and medical personnel continued to make drugs inaccessible to people, who most needed them - children and pregnant women, the two groups most vulnerable to the disease.
The World Health Organisation recommended artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) as the drug of choice to fight malaria. Artemisinin was compound extracted from a herb that was mostly grown in China.
Prudence Hamade, chairperson of Medecins Sans Frontieres' International Malaria Working Group, said: "We have many very good drugs, but populations which need them most are not getting them, and these are the rural poor."
Fight against malaria
Citing a study in Burundi, Hamade said only nine percent of children with malaria were treated with ACTs in 2003 and 2004.
She said: "Developed countries need to contribute more to the fight against malaria and because it only affects people in developing world, it's a neglected disease."
According to the WHO, one of the world's oldest diseases, malaria sickened between 300 million and 500 million people a year, killing more than one million of them, or a person every 30 seconds.
JB Rwakimari of Uganda's National Malaria Control Programme called the disease - which hounded 95% of the country's 28-million population all year round - a top killer.
'We've not many health facilities'
The remaining five percent of the population lived on higher ground, which was affected only seasonally by the deadly pest. He said: "340 people in Uganda die every day from malaria, 320 of them are children."
The medical doctor, who had suffered at least six episodes of malaria himself, said: "We have not many health facilities. Parents carry their sick children for miles and when they get to a clinic, the child may be close to death."
Because of their immature immune systems, children succumbed very easily to malaria and could die within 24 hours of the onset of symptoms if they were not treated.
However, some adults might sometimes become so used to it that they could even continue working with all the immense discomfort associated with the disease.
Rwakimari said: "But they are weak and it affects the economy." According to the WHO, the disease drained African output by $12bn yearly.
- Reuters