Is Odisha losing the grip over malariaIJ Seems so when the State topped in the country with over 3.36 lakh malaria positive cases till October 1 this year vis-a-vis around 3 lakh cases in 2011.
Moreover, with 65 deaths till the end of September this year vis-a-vis 56 till September 2015, Odisha again tops in the country in the list of malaria deaths and singlehandedly takes around 35 per cent of the total malarial death burden in the country.
Ominously, the annual fatality rate till September 2016 in Odisha has been around 19 per 1 lakh against 17 per 1 lakh malaria cases for the same period in 2015.
More stinging facts are: Odisha’s Slide Positive Rate (SPR), number of slides detected as malaria positive of the total blood slides examined, in September 2016 is around 6.1 against 6.6 in 2011. And Odisha is only second to Meghalaya in SPR in 2016. Significantly, all other north-eastern States have the SPR of around 3 from a high of over 7-9 in 2015. But Odisha could see a drop in the SPR by mere 0.64 points between 2015 and 2016.
What looks alarming is that brain malaria or falciparum malarial cases in the State account for around 86.9 per cent of the total malarial cases reported against 84.24 per cent by 2015 September-end. And Odisha is the only State to witness such high rise in falciparum cases in the country this year. The worse indication is that with such a high rate, Odisha even has fared poorer than some north-eastern States like Assam, Sikkim, Nagaland and Manipur.
Significantly, the slide falciparum positive rate in Odisha by September-end this year is 5.33 vis-a-vis around four in 2013. Here again, Odisha is second to Meghalaya. In contrast, high-burden north-eastern States like Tripura and Mizoram, where the slide falciparum positive rates were in the range of 9-6 per 100 blood slides, have recorded a fall to around 3. For this, Odisha has now been grouped along only with Meghalaya in the country having high-burden of cerebral malaria cases.
However, the fact of some respite for Odisha is that it was able to bring down the annual fatality rate to much below half of the 2010 fatality toll -- a goal set under the National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP). Also, the annual fatality rate is much below the national average of 25 per 1 lakh positive cases.
According to Public Health Director Dr Kailash Das, an early detection of cases has led to effectively bringing down the fatality rate in the State below that of national average. ASHA Karmis armed with RDT (Rapid Diagnostic Test) toolkits are visiting every household in the endemic villages, as a result of which the annual blood examination rate in Odisha is higher than the ideal norm, he claimed.
Sources, however, attribute the hike this year to the huge vacancies of ASHA Karmis in endemic districts that threw a spanner in the Government’s drive for an early detection of cases to prevent complication and curb fatality rate.