Health News of Sunday, 5 March 2006
Source: Bedejo, Gbenga
Lately I have been staring at the mirror. This is certainly not because of vanity. Knowing that it is easily possible to become a fool who forgets how he looked once he observed himself in the mirror; staring at the mirror is my way of marking the trail of the things I observe around me.
Specifically, it helps me to consider the following:
To put faces to the millions of children that die from malaria before the age of 5 in Africa. These rather scary statistics represents a forgotten lot whose deaths have become a scar on the conscience of the living.
I was saddened by the recent plane crashes in Nigeria and felt it badly as I know victims from both occurrences. I also read of the justifiable outpour of anger and lamentations at the state of the aviation industry. However, Malaria kills more people in Africa. It is believed that Malaria is responsible for as many as half the deaths of African children under the age of five. Further, in regions of intense transmission, 40% of toddlers may die of acute malaria. The disease kills more than one million people every year, 90% of which are sub-Saharan Africans. This is approximately 2,800 deaths per day.
According to Dr. Wenceslaus Kilama, Chairman, Malaria Foundation International "The Malaria epidemic is like loading up seven Boeing 747 airliners each day, then deliberately crashing them into Mt. Kilimanjaro." The irony is not lost, Mt Kilimanjaro is in Africa and more children in Africa die of Malaria fever.
By the time it takes you to read this paragraph, two people would be dead. About 100 photo albums (on a 30 page album) is required per day to hold the photographs of the 2,800 dead. It will also take roughly 20 editions of Ovation, Hello or Ebony magazines to carry the obituaries of the daily victims of malaria. This statistics is enough to generate anger in anyone that cares especially because of the general indifference of the Africa society to measure the staggering cost in human lives. It is certainly criminal on the part of the general citizenry not to notice this scourge in our society. It is also criminal that the press will rather splash showbiz news than highlight this tragedy.
In Nigeria, there is a hubristic approach to most things, for example we are hooked on being seen as the giant of Africa, and of having a fantastic fashion sense, yet we yearly submit hundreds of thousands of defenceless children to malaria without batting the eye. Does it matter that we are a leader in world fashion or culture if we cannot protect children whose only misfortune is to be African-born.
For the purpose of presenting a basic understanding and background, some facts about malaria are as follows:
? Malaria is preventable and treatable and yet it remains one of the major causes of death worldwide.
? It threatens the lives of about 40% of the world's population, infects 300 to 500 million people and causes over one million deaths each year worldwide.
? Malaria is an infectious disease caused by the Plasmodium parasite
? Malaria is transmitted to humans by infected female Anopheles mosquitoes that feed on human blood.
? The mosquito bite injects the malaria parasite into the blood, which then travels through the bloodstream to the liver.
? In the liver, the parasites grow and develop, until they are ready to leave the liver and enter the bloodstream again.
? Once the parasites re-enter the bloodstream they invade the red blood cells, finish growing, and begin to multiply quickly.
? The number of parasites increases until the red blood cells burst, releasing thousands of parasites into the bloodstream.
? The parasites then attack other red blood cells, and the cycle of infection continues, causing the common signs and symptoms of malaria
? It takes only one bite from an infected mosquito to contact malaria
? Malaria can live inside you for years and it can be a long-term disease. Malaria represents a huge threat to the economies of Africa. According to the World Health Organisation, Malaria has been estimated to cost Africa more than US$ 12 billion every year in lost GDP, even though it could be controlled for a fraction of that sum. As anyone will appreciate, a million dead children every year is a major depletion of the future generation and a wastage of monumental proportion. Africans are good at ignoring facts. Even when we stare at the mirror, we have a built-in resistance to accepting what we see. We are familiar with wastage of people and resources; we are content with sacrificing a million children every year at the altar of complacency. This must be reversed.
Political commitment to eradicating malaria is flimsy. The Abuja Declaration of 2000 that endorsed a strategy to combat Malaria across Africa is half-hearted and gathering dust on the shelf. The Declaration in itself does not go far enough as it only seeks to establish short term goals such as specifying and monitoring the number of people having access to treatment and other protective measures. Since the Abuja Declaration in 2000 and the Roll Back Malaria partnership that preceded it in 1998, malaria has continued to be on the increase with over 7 million people dead. What is needed now is a bold strategy to eradicate the disease within the next ten years. Currently most of the people tackling malaria are the likes of Bill Gates who have committed a substantial amount of money to research. All Africans around the world can join this campaign too. We certainly cannot afford to be complacent any longer.