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AFRICA
Mosquito
beth jakob
Have
you smacked a mosquito today?
Friday, April
25, 2008
It’s World Malaria Day and as we STILL don’t have a vaccine, I guess us
non-scientists can contribute to the fight by whacking a few of the disgusting
little wretches.
Don’t get me wrong- I am really glad that this deadly parasitic disease is
getting more attention. Half a billion people catch it every year. It kills a
child (most likely an African child) every 30 seconds. Considering the fact that
there’s a whole week devoted to Homeopathy Awareness (?), I guess we can give
malaria at least one day. It has put me in the hospital three times and I am a
relatively wealthy, lucky and educated person. Here in Burkina, it’s responsible
for thousands of deaths every year and many lost days of work and school for
those that survive it.
We are being told that a malaria vaccine will probably be ready by 2010. The
good scientists at the Malaria Vaccine Initiative seem to be working hard on it.
But they don’t have the kind of resources that, for example, Pfizer poured into
making those little blue Viagra pills that have been on the market for 10 years
now and that last year alone made them 1.7 billion dollars.
And given the way the world works, I think everybody knows that saving the lives
of millions third-world people will never garner the same huge cash profits as
perking up the wilting manly-bits of the wealthy.
Don't call me bitter- just call me frustrated. Malaria deaths are preventable
tragedies.
And until we can make sure that fewer children die, efforts here at family
planning and improving quality of life are severely hampered. It's hard to tell
a couple out in an isolated village, far from decent medical care, that they
should limit their family size. These people know from hard experience that
deadly diseases strike hardest at small children.
With an effective and safe malaria vaccine available to everyone on the world,
that would mean one less killer on the loose. And that's one less element
contributing to poverty and hopelessness.
Beth at the Oursi Dunes
portrait by MLW
Tuesday, April
25, 2006
Kate
Africa Malaria Day
Let’s take a step back for a moment. How did I end up working on malaria in
Congo? Back in the day, when I was first in Africa, I was living with a Kenyan
family in Nairobi and working on that sexy beast, HIV/AIDS. One night, as I was
climbing under my mosquito net, my host sister asked me if I worried about
malaria when I was at home in the US.
Why would anyone worry about malaria? It seems quaint. Like a plague that befell
explorers and treasure hunters in the 19th century.
Today –Africa Malaria Day, 2006- malaria still kills 1 to 3 million people each
year, most of who are children in sub-Saharan Africa. Here in the Congo, the
average child under the age of five gets malaria eight times a year. That’s once
every 6 or 7 weeks or too much of the time to leave a mother still sane. Between
malaria, respiratory infections, diarrhea and a host of other things, about 12%
of Congolese kids don’t make it to their fifth birthday.
Malaria is easy to treat and ever easier to prevent. With a $5 mosquito net
treated with insecticide, your can protect a small family for 5 years. Dismally
failing malaria drugs can be replaced with new artemisinin-based drug
combinations.
So what’s the problem? It’s the same old story here in Congo. People can’t get
to health centres where there is no transport. Even if there were transport,
roads in Congo are nearly non-existent. Women lose significant income when they
spend a morning at the health centre away from their fields or market stalls.
And frankly, subsidised mosquito nets and effective drugs just aren’t in the
health centres in large enough quantities to make a significant difference to
malaria illness at the larger level.
To date, there are no subsidized artemisinin-based drugs on the shelves of the
health centres or pharmacies in this country. And at a price of $3-17 for one
effective treatment, these drugs are out of the reach of many rural and
urban-poor families. The big donors are making promises, we are waiting and the
Congolese are dying.
But there are success stories. The sale of subsidised nets through social
marketing in the health centers has allowed many health centres to use revenue
from nets to finance other activities. And mothers report that their families
are no longer falling ill with malaria. A treated mosquito net is a hot
commodity around here and that in and of itself is a success.
Happy Africa
Malaria Day!
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Kate
It’s that time of the year again, folks: Africa Malaria Day!
For those of you who aren’t buddies with our friend Plasmodium (the parasite
that causes malaria), he’s a nasty little buggers that kills somewhere between 1
and 3 million people a year – mostly small children. Here in the Congo, it’s
estimated that kids under five get malaria about 4 times a year, which boils
down to a serious death threat every three months.
But the good news that using a mosquito net treated with insecticide can cut
your chance of getting malaria in half. And life saving drugs based on the
Chinese plant Artemisia (or Sweet Annie as it’s called in the US) can save your
life if you do get sick. It’s all a matter of getting access to these products:
both physically and financially. Even Ashley Judd is getting into the fight
against malaria!
So give a shout to your government to keep the anti-malaria money coming or give
a few bucks to a good organisation that can get a net to a kiddo in the bush.
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