Latest update: 28/06/2011

- diseases - drugs - Madagascar

Malaria: an unending battle

Efforts to combat malaria in Madagascar have been hampered by increasing resistance to the cheapest and most easily obtainable drugs. This week Health heads to the island nation to understand why this mosquito-transmitted disease refuses to be swept out.

HEALTH

By Mairead DUNDAS

We start in Maroansetra, a dusty town in the northeast of the island where as many as 500 people seek treatment per day. Here the villagers can’t afford the new highly effective medications, known as artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs). Instead they self-medicate with drugs that are twenty times cheaper than ACTs. Sadly, these older treatments also serve to exacerbate the problem.

Next we explore how mosquito nets are being used – and misused – in Madagascar. Less than half of all children under the age of five sleep under nets treated with insecticide, despite this being hailed by the World Health Organisation as the best method of prevention.

And finally, we take a look at a new technique to eradicate malaria which targets mosquitos directly. Scientist in Israel believe they've developed a chemical that attracts and kills the disease-carrying pests.

Mairead Dundas

Presenter

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In Deep Water

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(1) comment

Comments (2)

are bed nets in use, in every home in a village?

by Anonyme - 05/07/2011 - 19:01

via what methodology (top-down 'give it to them and tell them to use it'; or, bottom up, grassroots-based method whereby project TOTs (trainer of trainers) train village-selected health workers, to use the net themselves and then to visit each home helping family discuss/hang up bed net, followed with a second home visit in two days to further discuss problems/needs) is a project effected? This would be crucial; also, it would reveal if a group of villagers has a dire need for fishing nets, and project could actually provide, for low price, actual fishing nets as needed by villagers (if bed nets tend to be used for fishing nets!)

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malaria prevention

by Anonyme - 05/07/2011 - 02:54

I think bed nets are only one of several methods of malaria prevention. Indoor spraying is probably superior, but no one method alone can eradicate malaria. Malaria was controlled in the U.S., Europe and many other lands in the last century. The same methods could be used; that they are not is inexcusable.

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