BRAZZAVILLE, April 25 (AFP) - The UN World Health Organisation's Africa director, Luis Sambo, on Monday urged governments to coordinate more closely in fighting malaria, as some officials said old-fashioned nets helped the most.
In a statement issued to mark the annual Africa Malaria Day, the WHO's regional director for the continent pointed out that "malaria is a challenge we have to fight together", which currently costs Africa some 12 billion dollars (9.2 billion euros) a year.
Sambo, whose offices are in Congo's capital Brazzaville, said it was good news that last year 20 countries had slashed or eliminated all tax and customs duties on mosquito nets and insecticides, but health officials have also complained that persuading people to use nets is difficult.
The debilitating and sometimes fatal disease accounts for 35 percent of all people seeking health care in Senegal, the WHO director in that country, Bacary Sambou, said in a report published by the west African country's pro-government daily Le Soleil.
Half the problem, health officials in some countries have said, is resistance to mosquito nets, particularly in towns.
Senegal's Health Minister Issa Mbaye Samb was marking the occasion by going to the western Thies region to take part in the launch of an awareness and prevention campaign, but his country has already managed to bring the death rate down to between one and two percent of the 1,129,000 registered cases, a third of what it was in 1990.
In all, Sambo recalled, African malaria sufferers, afflicted with a disease widespread on much of the continent and sometimes presented as a bigger social and health challenge than HIV/AIDS, account for 60 percent of all those hit worldwide, which is well over 350 million each year.
About 80 percent of the world's annual malaria deaths are in Africa.
African leaders decided to take on the challenge jointly in 2000, when they also established the annual malaria day at a summit in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, stating that their aim was to reduce the burden of the disease on the continent by half within 10 years.
Malaria has become the main killer in Gabon, which has some strains of the disease increasingly resistant to treatment, due to hostility to using mosquito nets, according to people interviewed in the capital of the often humid country straddling the equator.
One Libreville man told AFP that nets were "so old-fashioned you'd think you were back in the village."
His neighbour, a 33-year-old soldier who gave his name as Rufus, said that even if he uses one, "it's like being in a coffin. Then it gets too hot and I get rid of it in the night."
A woman called Sylvana said she was convinced fans kept mosquitos out, while acknowledging each of her three children went down with malaria crises several times a year.
The National Programme to Fight Malaria (PNLP) thus chose a town, Oyem in the north of Gabon, rather than a village, to use Monday as the day for the start of a campaign to have people accept nets, rather than resorting to insecticides.
PNLP director Modeste Mabicka said that where nets are still used, only 31 percent of the local people have malaria. Where they are not, the figure can be 71 percent.
One PNLP midwife, Mathilde Lendoye-Endgandzas, said the problem was simply -- but importantly -- an awareness one. "It's just the time it takes to explain to people that if you can sleep under a net, then the rate of fever will come down."
050425
AF050442
Copyright ©AFP 2005. All Rights Reserved. AFP articles contained on the AEGiS web site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without AFP's prior written permission. You may make one copy of each article for your personal, non-commercial use only; more copies would require AFP's prior written permission. obtained from the owners of any trademarks or copyrighted materials whose marks and materials are included in AFP photos or materials. Therefore you will be solely responsible for obtaining any and all necessary releases from whatever individuals and/or entities necessary for any uses of AFP stories, photos or graphics. http://www.afp.com/
AEGiS is a 501(c)3, not-for-profit, tax-exempt, educational corporation. AEGiS is made possible through unrestricted grants from Boehringer Ingelheim, Elton John AIDS Foundation, the National Library of Medicine, Bridgestone Firestone Trust Fund, and donations from users like you. Always watch for outdated information. This article first appeared in 2005. This material is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between you and your doctor.
©1990, 2005 - AEGiS. AEGiS presents published material, reprinted with permission and neither endorses nor opposes any material. All materials appearing on AEGiS are protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under U.S. copyright and other laws and are the property of AEGiS, or the party credited as the provider of the content.
