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Africa: Malaria Has Remained Among the Most Devastating Diseases in Continent
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The Times of Zambia (Ndola)
EDITORIAL
25 April 2008
Posted to the web 25 April 2008
Ndola
MALARIA has remained among the most devastating diseases on the African continent with hundreds of thousands of fatalities attributed to the disease each year.
Zambia has not been spared from this grim experience. Cases of malaria still dominate statistics in our health institutions across the country.
The advent of HIV/AIDS has had the unfortunate effect of relegating malaria as a disease to lower ranks in the minds of most people with tragic out comes.
This is why all efforts aimed at turning back the terrible tide of malaria are welcome and should be supported wholeheartedly by all stakeholders.
A number of corporate bodies and business houses have come forward with substantial resource outlays to support the fight against malaria in Zambia.
The most visible of these initiatives has been the supply of mosquito nets to various communities in the country.
These noble gestures have been undertaken in tandem with the efforts by the Government at the national level through the ministry of Health to fight and halt malaria.
There is, however, still a lot of work to be done to ensure that incidences of malaria, especially given our indigenous environmental conditions which support the survival of the mosquito, are substantially brought to manageable levels.
This work cannot be left to the Government and other cooperating partners alone but must be actively supported by Zambians at every level of our society.
One area where support in the fight against malaria can be focused even at the grass root level is sensitisation in the use of treated mosquito nets.
It is now common knowledge that of all the mosquito nets that are distributed by various bodies, a good percentage of them end up being put to uses other than what they were meant for.
Specifically, the nets are increasingly being used as fishing nets. This is a terrible setback in the fight against such a serious killer disease as malaria.
Unless this trend is curbed, resources will be wasted while the disease itself will continue to wreck havoc on society.
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But the onus is also on local communities who live within the affected communities to play their part because they live and interact with the people.
The awareness of the danger posed by malaria should never come to the fore on commemoration day alone.
It should be an awareness that must be lived through each day in the form of complementary efforts by everyone.
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