Azore Opio
5 May 2008
For the last 3000 years malaria has proven to be one of the most elusive diseases. It has adapted and survived almost anything that mankind has invented to destroy it.
The artful dodger, so it seems malaria must come to be called, continues to kill millions each year (mostly children in Africa).Plasmodium, the single-celled parasite that causes malaria, is elusive first because it thrives both in man and the female anopheles mosquito. Second, because it is capable of developing resistance to both insecticides and drugs.
While scientists are working tirelessly to invent a malaria vaccine, they have been combating the disease on two fronts; by attacking mosquitoes and by treating infected people with drugs.
In fighting mosquitoes directly, man has tried to physically destroy them with chemicals such as the outdated DDT and their breeding places. The second strategy is to use drugs such as are found in hospitals and pharmacies.
A malaria infection leads to fever and often death. So battles against the disease have been intensified by taking the fight to the mosquitoes and the man. It is not known where and when the next major breakthrough in the fight against malaria will come from. That is more than enough reason for humankind to call for concerted efforts under the international coalition known as "Roll Back Malaria."
The initiative saw the light of day in 1998. Its strategy is to reduce the malaria burden on society by 50 percent by 2010. Thus, the National Malaria Control Programme has been very active on the field with emphasis on the use of insecticide-treated bed nets and the newest and probably most effective drug - the Artemisinin Combination Therapy, ACT.
Health experts encourage those who feel feverish, experience headaches, joint paints, loss of appetite, nausea (feeling of vomiting) abdominal pains and (diarrhoea in children) to go for a malaria test before rushing to buy any drug. Only after an accurate diagnosis may one go for the ACT drugs that are available in hospitals and pharmacies.
Experts and scientists around the world agree that the fight against malaria will only be won through a combination of approaches ranging from new medications and the final discovery of a vaccine, to the use of mosquito bed nets and residential spraying of insecticide.
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