Malaria is a silent genocide we must curb
Feb 12, 2007
MALARIA has been around for so long that no one seems to mind its ravages. Malaria kills at least 320 Ugandans daily, mostly defenceless children below the age of five. It is the immediate cause of death in most of our HIV/AIDS patients.
Dr. Sam Kibende
MALARIA has been around for so long that no one seems to mind its ravages. Malaria kills at least 320 Ugandans daily, mostly defenceless children below the age of five. It is the immediate cause of death in most of our HIV/AIDS patients.
Over a million people die of malaria worldwide each year and 90 percent of those affected are in Africa.
Malaria no longer responds to traditional remedies. In many cases it is even resistant to the most recently imported combination therapies like coartem. It is a shame that other countries have put an end to this silent genocide and haemorrhage of their economies while Ugandans are still debating the pros and cons of using DDT.
Malaria costs the Ugandan economy $658,200,599 annually. Most of this money is paid directly back to the so-called donors to purchase anti-malarial drugs and accessories.
There are serious economic consequences of malaria at the household level, primarily in communities engaged in subsistence. These people’s productivity (and therefore source of livelihood) is curtailed because of ill health. This exacerbates the poverty trap and widens the gap between the rich and the poor (social inequalities). Besides restricting individual worker productivity, malaria also inhibits foreign investment, and transportation, which in time will adversely affect economic growth.
The world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, which are mostly American corporations, are stinkingly rich but lack research and development laboratories for malaria. Academic laboratories focused on malaria research are mostly foreign and usually lack funding. The Wellcome Trust recently estimated that worldwide malaria research amounted to $84m each year, or $42 per fatality, whereas research in asthma amounts to $800 million annually, or $500 per fatality.
This is because there are little incentives to fund research on a disease that affects people who cannot pay for medicine. There is simply no market for a malaria vaccine.
One wonders why Uganda is wasting time experimenting with less effective and actually more toxic alternatives like Icon,when so many people are dying each day. WHO, just like the Stockholm Convention, has cleared use of DDT in control of malaria. Let’s spray homes with DDT. The genocide must stop.
The writer is the Deputy Director of the Joint Clinical Research Centre
MALARIA has been around for so long that no one seems to mind its ravages. Malaria kills at least 320 Ugandans daily, mostly defenceless children below the age of five. It is the immediate cause of death in most of our HIV/AIDS patients.
Over a million people die of malaria worldwide each year and 90 percent of those affected are in Africa.
Malaria no longer responds to traditional remedies. In many cases it is even resistant to the most recently imported combination therapies like coartem. It is a shame that other countries have put an end to this silent genocide and haemorrhage of their economies while Ugandans are still debating the pros and cons of using DDT.
Malaria costs the Ugandan economy $658,200,599 annually. Most of this money is paid directly back to the so-called donors to purchase anti-malarial drugs and accessories.
There are serious economic consequences of malaria at the household level, primarily in communities engaged in subsistence. These people’s productivity (and therefore source of livelihood) is curtailed because of ill health. This exacerbates the poverty trap and widens the gap between the rich and the poor (social inequalities). Besides restricting individual worker productivity, malaria also inhibits foreign investment, and transportation, which in time will adversely affect economic growth.
The world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, which are mostly American corporations, are stinkingly rich but lack research and development laboratories for malaria. Academic laboratories focused on malaria research are mostly foreign and usually lack funding. The Wellcome Trust recently estimated that worldwide malaria research amounted to $84m each year, or $42 per fatality, whereas research in asthma amounts to $800 million annually, or $500 per fatality.
This is because there are little incentives to fund research on a disease that affects people who cannot pay for medicine. There is simply no market for a malaria vaccine.
One wonders why Uganda is wasting time experimenting with less effective and actually more toxic alternatives like Icon,when so many people are dying each day. WHO, just like the Stockholm Convention, has cleared use of DDT in control of malaria. Let’s spray homes with DDT. The genocide must stop.
The writer is the Deputy Director of the Joint Clinical Research Centre