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Last Friday, Nigeria joined the rest of the world in observing the first ever World Malaria Day. The United Nations has now designated the 25th of April of every year as the day for the entire world to focus attention on malaria, a disease that is reputed to kill about a million people all over the world every year. The theme of this year’s Malaria Day is "Malaria: a disease without borders".
This theme is most appropriate. Although developing nations bear the brunt of this great killer, especially the continent of Africa which is said to account for over 90 per cent of the world casualty figure for this disease, Malaria is fast turning out as an affliction that respects neither nation nor age nor status. The rich and the poor, the old and the young, men and women all get afflicted and suffer its ravages. The statistics about the devastation this disease wreaks on humanity is chilling: it is said to kill two African children every minute and 800 children die world-wide from it daily. The socio-economic impact of this malady on nations and peoples of the world is incalculable. Billions of man-hours are lost yearly due to the indisposition malaria visits on its victims. Apart from the direct harm it causes its victims, malaria also helps to aggravate other diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes, etc. It is not an exaggeration, therefore, to say that the tiny mosquito has been waging a silent world war on humanity with a certain degree of success without our conscious determination or commitment to seriously contain it. Although efforts to ‘roll back malaria’ are being made by nations and the United Nations, some of it seems half-hearted especially on the part of most developing nations. Malaria is a disease of mainly developing countries where, unfortunately, not much attention is paid to environmental sanitation. The simple truth is that if the mosquito is denied a breeding ground, it would not reproduce so fast and in such great numbers to form an army that would decimate populations. If only we can learn to clean our gutters, fumigate our drainage channels, evacuate our rubbish heaps and take other simple and sensible steps to eradicate or reduce the vector that causes malaria, we will not have cause to embark on the yearly ritual of lamenting about how we suffer so much from this public health challenge. Some developing countries can also be accused of some kind of misplacement of priority in the fight against some diseases. Malaria is the main disease of most of these nations. Instead of directing human and material resources in containing it, they tend to spend a disproportionate amount of their time and money on HIV/AIDS. Malaria by far wreaks greater havoc than HIV/AIDS. While HIV/AIDS more or less gives its victims some kind of ‘suspended life sentence’, Malaria tends to visit jungle justice on its victims. Clearly, leaders of Africa must have a paradigm shift on the issue of the diseases that afflict us and how we must respond to them. They should use the opportunity of this World Malaria Day to think about what concrete things need to be done to free millions of Africans from an ailment that accounts in large part for the continent’s poverty. The first thing that must be done is to improve access to the treatment of malaria. Some parasites that cause this terrible disease are becoming resistant to drugs. The challenge here (and this leads us to the second thing we must do) is that our own scientists must lead in the research to find drugs that can deal with this situation. We must also create an enabling environment for our pharmacologists to mass produce whatever remedies are discovered in our laboratories so that the drugs would be cheap enough for people to buy. Some of the drugs available now produced from America and Europe are too expensive and what is more, some prove ineffectual in providing a cure. Malaria is our own disease so to say. We must, therefore, do everything to save our own lives. This is one area where we do not have to wait for salvation from America, Europe or the agencies of the United Nations or international Non-Governmental Organisations.
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