Extreme weather events in Malawi have led to a “very strong” increase in malaria cases and deaths, a global health chief said ahead of World Malaria Day on Apirl 25.
Peter Sands, director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, told reporters that Hurricane Freddy in March brought in six months of rain for six days, causing cases to rise as well. there. “The dramatic increase in cases due to weather disasters caused by climate change shows the need to ‘get ahead’ now,” he said. In both countries, puddles left by receding water provide ideal breeding grounds for malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
The WHO says much progress has been made in the fight against malaria, but stresses that a child still dies from the disease every minute. In 2021, WHO says there will be about 247 million cases of the disease worldwide and 619,000 deaths from malaria. Scientific breakthroughs saw more than a million children in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi receive the RTS,S vaccine made by British pharmaceutical giant GSK last year. Another vaccine, R21/Matrix-M, developed by Britain’s Oxford University, was approved for use in Ghana earlier this month – the first time it has been approved for use anywhere. In the world.
Vaccines are less resistant to disease than conventional diagnostic and therapeutic infrastructures due to the relatively high cost of vaccination and the difficulty of large-scale deployment. The groups most susceptible to malaria are children under 5 years of age and pregnant women, with deaths largely due to late diagnosis and treatment.
