By Kemo Cham
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An Anopheles stephensi mosquito shortly
after obtaining blood from a human
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[First published on www.politicosl.com] Sierra Leone has been included in
the United States’ President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), the White House has
announced.
The country was named on Monday
alongside Cote D’Ivoire and Cameroon to be part of the US government’s program
that seeks to eliminate the deadly parasitic disease that accounts for most
global deaths to illness.
Malaria is a parasitic disease
caused by the protozoan called plasmodium. The parasite is transmitted by the
mosquito.
According to the World Health
Organisation (WHO), the disease claimed 438,000 lives worldwide last year, out
of 214 million cases.
More than 3 billion people, nearly
half of the world’s population, are at risk of contracting malaria, according
to WHO.
The PMI is a bipartisan effort
initiated by President George W. Bush and it
intends to reduce the burden of
malaria in Africa and Southeast Asia. Through it the US government,
together with its agencies the USAID, the CDC, the Department of Defense, and
the Peace Corps, work with partner countries, donors, and multilateral
organizations across the world to fight against the disease.
Monday’s announcement marked a major
shift in the initiative.
It follows the submission of a
budgetary request by President Barrack Obama for an additional $200 million for
the initiative. This, the White House said, will bring its total funding
requested to $874 million for the next fiscal year, representing a 30 percent
increase from what it had for this year. This more than doubles the PMI’s
budget at the beginning of the Obama Administration.
It is with these additional
resources that the US intends to take “bold new steps” to combat malaria.
Along with the inclusion of the
three new countries, the White also said it was expanding its existing program
in Burkina Faso to cover the entire country.
This means that “nearly 70 million
more at-risk people will have access to insecticide-treated nets, anti-malarial
drugs, and other interventions,” said Shaun Donovan, Director of the Office of
Management and Budget at the White House, in a statement.
This will bring to roughly 332
million people – 92 percent of those at risk of getting infected with malaria –
the number of people covered by the PMI, he added.
The program seeks to provide nearly
14 million bed nets and ensure that over 27 million people in sub-Saharan
Africa can sleep safely at night.
The PMI is also set to accelerate
the research, development, and evaluation of new tools to combat malaria, with
the help of both public and private sector researchers, Donovan said.
It will also launch an effort to
eliminate malaria in two countries: Zambia and Cambodia.
“Zambia suffered from high rates of
malaria, so if we can eliminate malaria there, we can eliminate it anywhere.”
“And, because Cambodia is the
geographic epicenter of emerging malaria strains that are becoming resistant to
anti-malarial drugs, ridding Cambodia of malaria would reduce the threat of
drug-resistant malaria elsewhere,” Donovan said.
Africa remains the most affected
with the bulk of the global malaria cases and deaths. In 2015, the region
recorded 89% of global malaria cases and 91% of deaths.
But despite the bleak statistics,
the last over one decade has witnessed tremendous reduction [60%] in the
disease’s burden since 2000. This has been attributed to increased prevention
and control measures.
“We’ve made big strides in the fight
against Malaria – saving millions of lives. That’s American leadership at work”
President Obama twitted following Monday’s announcement.
Anti-malaria drug study
The development comes as the
Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MoHS) announced commencement of a four-month
study to ascertain the efficacy and safety of some anti-malarial drugs in the
country.
The medications on trial are:
Artesunate +Amodiaquine, Artemether-Lumefantrine and Dihydroarte misinin +
Piperaquine.
The combination drug therapies are
being examined for their effect on children. They have been touted for use as
first line anti-malaria drugs in treating uncomplicated falciparum malarial.
The National Malaria Control
Programme under the MoHS is conducting the study in collaboration with WHO, a
statement from the ministry said.
Four sentinel sites, including in
Freetown and Makeni, have been identified to host the study.
Children aged between six and 59
months presented with fever are being targeted.
The study is expected to be
concluded in June.
Sierra Leone has a malarial
prevalence rate of 43 percent, according to the last Malaria Indicator Survey
in 2013.
(C) Politico 25/02/16
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