Anti-malaria drive sets off
2003-04-03 23:45
Pretoria - South African participants in a region-wide drive to create malaria awareness received a presidential send-off on Thursday.
Various countries in southern Africa are to participate in the Racing Against Malaria (RAM) rally scheduled to start later this month and which culminates in Tanzania on April 25 - Africa Malaria Day.
At a function in Pretoria, national malaria control manager Patrick Devanand Moonasar said there were between 19 and 21 million malaria cases and up to 300 000 deaths in the region every year.
Because drugs were available to combat the disease, the number of deaths was unacceptable, he said.
The RAM rally was aimed at creating awareness to scale up the action against malaria, and to mobilise resources, Moonasar said.
The participating countries are South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, Angola, Zambia, Malawi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania.
The military formations of these countries, including the South African Military Health Service, will be part of the campaign, as will private sector sponsors.
The South African rally team is to leave from Ndumo in KwaZulu-Natal next Thursday. From there it is to go to Naas in Mpumalanga and Giyani in Limpopo before meeting the Zimbabwean team at Beitbridge.
Preventable, curable
At Victoria Falls the Angolan and Botswana teams will join them, and in Lusaka they will meet the teams from Malawi, Mozambique and Swaziland.
On April 25 all teams will be in Dar es Salaam where participating countries' health ministers will present pledges from their heads of state renewing the undertaking to roll back malaria signed in Abuja, Nigeria, three years earlier.
President Thabo Mbeki said on Thursday the rally should further strengthen the region's focus on the fight against malaria.
"We should not allow that hundreds of thousands of our people should die from a disease that can be prevented and cured... This is a war we can and must win."
Mbeki emphasised the link between poverty and malaria.
"Treatment-seeking behaviour may be influenced by lack of education as well as inability to pay transport, consultation and treatment fees at health facilities.
"In Malawi, for very poor households the direct cost of malaria treatment is 28% of their annual income."
The president started his address by referring to Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah, who wanted a statue of a mosquito erected because it had saved his country from large-scale colonisation.
"But we are not here to celebrate the mosquito," he said.
- SAPA