Let’s tame malaria

The forcity with which malaria still wreaking havoc in many parts of Tanzania raises more questions than answers.

The disease remain the major killer in the country, despite various local and international initiatives to combat it,for many years taming malaria is one of Tanzania’s main priorities, in fact Tanzania is among African countries that have been quite aggressive in implementing malaria prevention and treatment programmes.

The Tanzania National Malaria Control programme is rated among the most effective, having been provided with sufficient anti-malarial drugs since 2006.

Despite all these effort the disease still kills mores more than 100,000 infants and attacks between 16 and 18 million people countrywide each year, this is not acceptable!

In Tanzania Zanzibar,malaria deaths has been cut by 90% ,thanks to large- scale prevention, treatment and care programmes, however on the mainland Tanzania the problem seems to be insurmountable . It is a pity that the mainland can not emulate Zanzibar success.

This is so yet the people even in the remotest areas, easily access and take antimalarial drugs frequently. But malaria parasites are becoming resistant  to drugs. This is what has forced the Tanzania Ministry of health and social  welfare to change the first line of choice of antimalarial time and again.

It is high time we re-examine our strategies to curb the malaria deaths, we need to seriously target mosquito-breeding grounds and decimate the insects before they  wipe us out

can someone help on this please!

3 comments

  1. Stilgherrian’s avatar

    Abdul, when I was visiting Tanzania, I was surprised by how seriously people took the risk of malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases. I wrote about that in Unreliable Tanzania 2: Nets — and, yes, Albert was really quite concerned that Lena and I hadn’t used our mosquito nets. Your post makes it clear why he was so concerned!

    The figure you give for people affected by malaria comes to something like 45% of Tanzania’s population! How does that manifest itself in everyday terms? Are we talking about people being unable to work for long periods? Or waves of sickness through a village, or… what?

  2. abdul kajumulo’s avatar

    people do work and malaria mostly attacks pregnant women and children under five, so you can see.

    some they get treatment and becomes well but some dies and the diseases keep on hunting this group day after day

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