The director of the World Health
Organization’s Global Malaria Programme, Dr. Robert Newman has told HealthNewsNG the world health governing
body is satisfied with the amount of work that has been done in Africa over the
past ten years in the control of malaria.
In an exclusive interview, Newman
said several major strides
have been achieved especially in securing financial and political commitments
from African states.
“I think Africa has done an
amazing job over the past 10 years compared to when I first went to Africa in
1995 to where it is today in 2013, there has been several major strides. What
made it possible is increase in political commitment and that was evident in
the just concluded summit. There has also been increase in financial
commitment. Political commitment is critical but without financial resources,
nothing much could be achieved,” Newman told HealthNewsNG.
He noted that while there has
been a global increase in financial commitment towards the fight against
malaria, Africa has enjoyed a major part of the funds. And this has led to the
scale-up of various control measures resulting in significant decline in
maternal mortality.
“There has been increase in
finance worldwide but most of it has been in Africa which has brought
tremendous results such scale up of preventive measures such as long-lasting
insecticide-treated mosquito nets, rapid diagnostics, effective treatment with
combination therapy, and the result has been impressive – 33 per cent decline
in malaria mortality in Africa over the past decade,” he said.
He however noted that while
current efforts are producing results as evident in decline in mortality rates
across Africa, a lot still needs to be done since malaria is totally treatable
and preventable.
He said: “This is great news but
we should also realize that there is still a lot of work to be done for a
disease that is entirely treatable and preventable.
“90 per cent of the people that
die from malaria are from Africa including children under the age of 5. Those
children are counting on us that the lifesaving commodities such as diagnostics
and insecticide-treated mosquito nets get to everywhere they are needed.
“Another challenge is “how do we
measure the impact of the interventions?” and there is also the issue of
surveillance. So it’s not just about collecting data alone; it’s about
collecting data, analyzing it and acting on it.
“At the local level, we need to
understand what is responsible for the results we are having. If the prevalence
is increasing, we need to understand why this is so – are people not taking
their medicines or are the drugs not working? Or are we just having a rainy
year with a lot of mosquitoes? We ask questions like “what is the data telling
me about the situations around me and what can I do about it?”
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