The Problem (The Forgotten Killer)

Malaria is the most widespread parasitic disease in the world. It kills more people than HIV/AIDS. It has been estimated that annually 500 million people worldwide suffer from the disease, 80% in Africa alone.

Malaria has never captured the public imagination as Aids has done, mainly because it does not affect the Western World. Equally alarming is the fact that malaria is responsible for high numbers of absenteeism at work and school. This is a significant loss in terms of hours lost by employees, farm workers and school children.

The malaria pandemic is further aggravated by resistance to available anti malaria drugs and traditional forms of medication such as chloroquine, mefloquine and combination of sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) also known as fansidar. This has become a growing threat for the control of malaria in Africa.

Furthermore, although many African Governments and indeed the WHO have allowed limited application of DDT for the control of malaria, environmentalists around the world are still putting up stiff resistance against its use. As the debate rages on, more African children and women continue to die and hours for economic activities lost, thus preventing the continent from developing at the pace it should. Since the issue of environmental concerns cannot be ignored, it is therefore important to offer alternative treatments that are effective and environmentally benign to combat the killer malaria.

In addition, one of the Millennium Development Goals is explicit about the need to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases. In particular, Target 8 urges World leaders and countries signatory to it to “have halted by 2015 and began to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases”. Uganda and most other African countries have ratified the UN Millennium Development Goals and are therefore bound to abide by its targets. Programmes and projects that will help the achievement of these goals must be supported both politically and financially.