In spite of the global efforts to control malaria, the disease remains a threat mainly in the least developed areas and among the poorest members of society. Those in the know of things are of the view that as it is both a major cause and a consequence of global poverty there is a need to define a critical strategy on prevention to reduce the toll of a disease that continues to kill more than four lakh people annually with one child dying every two minutes. Progress has been particularly slow in low-income countries with a high malaria burden, says WHO report.
Speaking of the dreaded vector-borne disease, former State secretary of Association of Physicians of India, Uttarakhand chapter Dr Sanjay Shah said, “In the case of malaria, prevention is the best method than cure. If a small country like Sri lanka can declare itself free from malaria last year, why can’t we at State-level, at least, achieve this goalIJ The mortality rate is huge on account of malaria. last year dengue and malaria took a heavy toll during the monsoon season. It is high time that the district authorities start vector control drives and prevention by spraying insecticides. Also awareness to people on using mosquito nets is a must.”
Guiding on the use of insecticide treated mosquito net, Shah said it is always better to use herbal insecticides in place of chemical ones since chemicals would have some effect on the humans.
However, campus director of Uttarakhand Ayurved University Dr Sunil Joshi said that various control methods adopted by the various governmental organisations to plug out malaria have proved a failure, , “The national malaria eradication programme has been devising various methods for the control of the disease, but none has proved effective. The final conclusion is that to prevent the disease we must wear full- sleeved clothes and our general body immunity.”
Joshi added, “Fogging, spray of DDT and other such pesticides was applied earlier to control it. But now they are not so much in vogue as they enter our food chains and cause other ailments. Then distribution of quinine tablets was taken up across the country. It proved a fiasco too. Use of insecticide treated mosquito net is again a non-sustainable method. The only way-out is to use alternative herbal options like Neem oil and ‘kapur’ and take preventive measures like covering our bodies fully with minimum exposure to the environment.”
Stronger malaria surveillance systems are urgently needed to enable a timely and effective malaria response in endemic regions and to track progress, the governments and the global malaria community must be held accountable, say the experts.
The district Malaria officer Dr Gurnam Singh said that the life-threatening disease of malaria is caused by parasites that are transmitted to people through the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes called “malaria vectors.”
The symptoms of malaria appear generally after seven days after the infective mosquito bites. The initial symptoms include shivering and fever, headache, chills and vomiting. If not treated within 24 hours, P falciparum malaria can progress to severe illness, often leading to death. But in India, this malaria is not so common, added Gurnam.
In areas where malaria in rampant, children under five are particularly susceptible to infection and 70% of all malaria deaths occur in this age group, says a study. Children with severe malaria are also observed to develop other symptoms of severe anaemia and respiratory distress. In adults, multi-organ involvement is also frequent.
To check the transmission of malaria, it is necessary to understand that Anopheles mosquitoes lay their eggs in water, which hatch into larvae, eventually emerging as adult mosquitoes. The female mosquitoes are hunting for blood meal to nurture their eggs and they prefer to lay eggs in shallow collections of fresh water, such as puddles abundant during the rainy season in tropical countries.
