Is elimination of malaria in Africa by 2010 unrealistic? (11)
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Dear all,
I am glad that we are in agreement about the first important point that, the 2010 goal would be impossible to achieve. However, with a little effort I believe that we could at least reduce the malaria burden quite significantly. First of all, it is important to admit that malaria is an unacceptable disease in our communities because it is curable and can be prevented. Therefore, we have to do something about it i.e. at the individual level, national level, regional level and global level. How many of our governments take malaria seriously? All government officials now talk about HIV/AIDS but not malaria, even if they do not understand the actual mode of transmission of HIV/AIDS! Compare the amount of funding that goes to HIV-related projects versus malaria control. It is very easy to organise seminars and workshops to sensitise government officials, but all ends at the exit of the conference hall! About three years ago, I organised a training workshop on malaria for the media. It was very successful and was attended by journalists from Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Malawi. We had facilitators from Tanzania, Uk, and the local WHO office. After a while, I organised a malaria seminar for all MPs of the United Republic of Tanzania and the Vice President was the guest of honour. It went well and was well attended, but to my surprise, more than half of the flyers with information on malaria, which was meant to help them deliver relevant information to their constituencies were found in the dust bin that evening!! However, they were very grumpy about the little allowance paid to them (i.e. paid to attend a seminar for their own good). Those are policy makers as well as legislators, who are supposed to deliver important decisions, allocate funds to the health sector, to enact laws pertaining to mosquito control etc. What do you expect from such policy makers? What about the common man who doesn't even get that privilege of attending seminars?
Actually, it is not true that all malaria vector control activities require funding from the central government or from multilateral organizations e.g. WHO. There are activities, which can be undertaken by communities and at the community level. Also, sometimes community members require just a little guidance on how to go about it not funding as such. If you revisit the malaria eradication era, you will see that, malaria control assistants used to walk fields and fields treating or spraying mosquito breeding sites, yet these days we have so many youths sitting idle unemployed! Why can't these youths be engaged in malaria vector control activities? What about scout and girl guides?
One of the problem is that, we are not serious about malaria control. In spite of all the measures that available today for malaria control, we still argue that more research is needed...more research is needed on this and that.....more research...more research....but we do not put to use what we already have in hand. Imagine the debate that has been going on about DDT! Then think of the number of children who die everyday from malaria! We would rather see children die in hundreds of thousands than use DDT because there is a possibility that, it might enter into the food chain, although we have never had conclusive evidence on this! Have you ever heard of any DDT-related cancer case? Yet we have many cancer cases today even where DDT has never been used!
There is so much to write about this, but I guess this is enough for today!
JN Ijumba
Jasper N Ijumba, BSc., MSc., PhD, (LLB Cand.)
University of Dar es Salaam
Department of Zoology & Wildlife Conservation
P.O. Box 35064
Dar es Salaam-Tanzania
Tel: +255 222 410 462
Fax: +255 222 410 480
Mobile: +255 744 361 597
+255 748 361 597
Email: mailto:jasperijumba@mail.com
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