With three out of four people at risk of catching malaria in WHO’s South-East Asia Region, including India, the world health agency has called for increased investment to tackle the deadly disease.
“Over 1.4 billion people continue to be at risk of malaria in South-East Asia. They are often the poorest, including workers in hilly or forested areas, in development projects such as mining, road and dam constructions, and upland subsistence farming in rural areas and urban areas,” said Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, WHO Regional Director for South-East Asia. On the eve of World Malaria Day, she said that the nations must continue surveillance for malaria and increase funding for diagnostics, drugs, insecticide-treated mosquito nets, and research and response to drug and insecticide resistance.
She said that Bangladesh, Bhutan, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Nepal, and Sri lanka have reduced the incidence of malaria cases by more than 75 per cent from 2000 to 2012. Thailand and Timor-leste are on track to achieve a decrease of over 75 per cent.India is expected to decrease malaria case incidence by 50-75 per cent by 2015 while Sri lanka is in the elimination phase; the country has had no indigenous cases since November 2012, down from 203 000 cases in 2000. Maldives has been malaria-free since 1984.
But the gains in malaria control, although substantial, could be reversed due to increasing parasite resistance to drugs, mosquito resistance to insecticides and re-introduction of transmission in places where the disease has been eliminated, warned Singh.Investments are needed to develop new tools, to conduct operational research to address bottlenecks in malaria control programmes, and to scale-up and ensure rational use of existing interventions.
Meanwhile, apex industry body ASSOCHAM has planned to launch an awareness campaign with an aim to spread information about malaria, its causes, prevention and treatment, said its Secretary General DS Rawat.