Malaria Control
We are at a potential turning point in the fight against malaria. We are better placed than ever before to scale up efforts using existing tools and proven solutions to tackle malaria.
Prevention
Malaria is entirely preventable and an integrated package of malaria control interventions that focuses on relatively simple but proven solutions can greatly reduce the suffering. Most malaria-carrying mosquitoes bite at night and Insecticide-Treated Nets (ITNs), if properly used and maintained, provide a cheap, safe and effective protective barrier, with the potential to reduce infant mortality by 20 percent. A net treated with special insecticides offers about twice the protection of an untreated net, and through its presence can also protect other people in the room, even if outside the net as the mosquito dies having rested on the net. Advances through long-lasting insecticide-treated net (LLIN) technology mean a net can retain its protective capacity for three years or more without re-treatment.
In addition to ITNs, it is sometimes appropriate to use specialized teams to spray an insecticide on the inside walls of houses - known as Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS). This helps kill the mosquitoes, thereby reducing malaria transmission to others.
Prevention efforts for pregnant women include administering at least twice during pregnancy single doses of antimalarials during routine antenatal clinic visits; this is known as Intermittent Preventive Treatment (IPT). IPT helps protect pregnant women from possible death and anaemia and also prevents malaria-related low birth weight in infants which causes some 100,000 infant deaths annually in Africa.1
Information and education are key for prevention efforts. Education campaigns are crucial, focussing on how to make proper and consistent use of ITNs, on how to recognize the illness in a child and know what measures to take, how to protect pregnant women and unborn children, and the importance of indoor residual spaying where it is used.
Treatment
Malaria is a curable disease if recognised, diagnosed and treated promptly and correctly. In recent years one of the greatest challenges in the fight against malaria is resistance to the cheapest and previously most widely used antimalarial drug - chloroquine - which is common around the world. New artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) now provide a highly effective alternative medicine to treat malaria and can slow resistance. However, the price of an adult dose of ACT is around US$ 1-3 - 10-20 times that of previously used antimalarials. Strategies to ensure all those suffering from malaria are treated properly and before the disease becomes severe are essential and feasible. They need patient education, trained healthworkers and affordable drugs (ACTs) as close to home as possible.
There is currently no malaria vaccine approved for human use, although many scientists around the world are working on developing an effective vaccine. The malaria parasite is a complex organism and scientists do not yet totally understand the immune responses that protect humans against malaria. However, while work on the malaria vaccine continues there are effective prevention and treatment tools available for use today with long term, predictable financing and political will are in place to sustain them.
Article: courtesy of the European Alliance Against Malaria and Malaria Consortium
Photos: Malaria Consortium and William Daniels
1. Malaria No More
