21 April 2009
Maputo — The president of the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) movement in Mozambique, Anglican Bishop Dinis Sengulane, on Tuesday declared that, despite all the encouraging results achieved to date, civil society should still undertake further efforts in the fight against malaria.
Speaking at a press conference marking the start of a series of activities to celebrate World Malaria Day (25 April), Sengulane urged "let us make every day of our lives a day of struggle against malaria, so that it ceases to be the main cause of mortality among children and adults".
He lamented the negligent attitude shown by some Mozambicans. Sengulane claimed that a large number, although they have mosquito nets in their houses have stopped sleeping under them on the spurious grounds that the netting makes the room hotter, or disturbs their sleep.
He thought these were psychological problems rather than any real objections to the nets, whose primary purpose is to prevent the bearer of the malaria parasite, the anopheles mosquito from biting people, especially children and pregnant women, at night.
Sengulane also lamented the reluctance shown by many people to seek medical help in good time. "When people feel that they have malaria, they delay in seeking medical assistance", he said. But the longer people delayed, the more risks they ran, the weaker they would feel, the less able they would be to work - and the greater the likelihood, in severe cases, of death.
Sengulane urged civil society organisations to take action against the stagnant pools where mosquitos breed.
25 April was initially declared as Africa Malaria Day in 2000, and since 2008 it has been World Malaria Day. In the last two years the Mozambican chapter of RBM has distributed over 200,000 mosquito nets to households indicated by the Health Ministry as belonging to the most vulnerable groups.
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