Malaria Treatment FAQ:
In the next ten years how do you think that the child mortality rate will be affected by malaria? Will it increase? Will it decrease? Please give facts to back up your answer!
In the next ten years how do you think that the child mortality rate will be affected by malaria? Will it increase? Will it decrease? Please give facts to back up your answer!
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Currently, between 2 and 3 million children in sub Saharan Africa are killed by malaria every year. In the next ten years one would expect this appalling figure to come down.
Already a lot is being done in the field of malaria prevention by International organizations such as Belinda and Bill Gates foundation and donors countries in supplying insecticide impregnated mosquito nets. Also several vaccine tests and small trials are on going in East and West Africa, the results have been reasonably good. The next year or two should see some large scale clinical trials. Of course it is still not clear if a break through will happen within 10 years.
Over the last few years years, resistance to Chloroquine by malaria has been reported on the East Africa coast and traveling inland. In ten years, the resistance could reach West Africa. This is bad news as treatment of malaria with Chloroquine is both cheap and widely available. The alternative of Artemisinin is not only expensive but supply is rather thin on the ground.
So in the next 10 years, the malaria mortality figure is going to be a mixed one with perhaps a slight improvement or even deterioration due to the increasing resistance to first line drug. However, if the vaccine experiment succeeds, the malarial mortality will dramatically fall.
Pellegrini Kitara-Okot
http:www.malariapreventiontips.com