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Mosquito spray, repellent and coils are also used to prevent infection but these are not very affordable to many people, especially in rural areas where more than half of the population live on less than 2 USD per day.
The big challenge in fighting malaria is mosquitoes which have grown resistant to chloroquine, then SP. Malaria parasites are winning this battle and I’m sure they have a plan to win but they may have finally met their match in ACT or artemisinin-based combination therapy.
The battle is on. It’s now up to me and you to play our role and put our strength together in the fight against malaria and many other diseases. This battle needs both our initiatives. Malaria is for real, not an issue or a dream, it’s a reality to many of us, and especially those who can not afford to treat or prevent it themselves. Commitment is essential to this fight, be it use of the existing channels or avenues that can bring people together and share the same ideas and enthusiasm.
This is because the fight against malaria just at the level of government doesn’t help in total eradication; implementation of the fight has to also be taken by people themselves. I will surely take sports and cultural activities as a starting point on the positive gatherings that can have people discuss ways and initiatives on how they can be part of this battle. Involvement of the community worked in Jambiani, I’m sure it will work in many other places.
Pan African youth delegates from Tanzania have declared to be part of this huge battle against malaria, its no longer safe to wait for it to turn to even a big disaster to start fighting. All Pan African youth leaders have to be ready as well. We make a lot of difference in our communities and our lives in a number of ways by the things we do. Yet there are still so many battles to be fought. This is just one more battles, albeit a crucial one. We have no choice but to put in our lists of battles and do something about it or it will keep defeating us. If that happens, the consequences will be devastating.
Written by Angela Damas, Tanzanian Pan African Youth leader
All information collected during field visit from different sources, including human intuition.
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Angela S. Damas
The influence of my own life and conditions I grew up in and grew to see others in has pushed me to not leave my community to somebody else. Instead I will take the first step of initiative. It takes one step to be able to have the second step, and third ...
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Comments
Prevention is better than cure atinukemi oshodi | Dec 6th, 2006
Statistics say that almost one million Africans die of malaria every year. I believe that the solution to this killer is simple but ambiguous because it will eventually involve the government of individual countries in Africa to stop the killer insects.
Prevention of conducive breeding grounds for these mosquitoes in the first place is best solution to the death or sickness of malaria.
I am involved in a private waste management program in my country, Nigeria...and the obvious problem of sewage evacuation is bad drainage system or should I say no drainage system. The blockage of these drainage systems contributes immensely to the breeding of mosquitoes. The stagnant water accumulated by rain or other domestic activities, at little corners of our homes is perfect for the malaria parasites.
Regardless of our individual efforts to clean our surroundings as much as possible by destroying all possible breeding grounds for mosquitoes is not enough. These mosquitoes will still, eventually find their way back to our homes from blocked or stagnant street gutters, if our government does not something about the poor drainage system in each capital-state or country.
Some of our effective cures or preventions to mosquitoes have also been very disadvantageous to us. A couple of years ago, I lost a classmate who was asthmatic , who died of insecticide spray even after adherence to its use rules, and mosquito nets have trapped people during sudden fire outbreaks. There have been mosquito body cream repellants that have caused all sorts of skin irritation and are cancerous.
Prevention of mosquito breeding is the best solutions to drastically reducing the death rate of malaria.
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