World Malaria Day
The Hippo is gone and we’re dressed in black today in support of World Malaria Day.
Malaria is treatable and preventable yet it is one of the most debilitating diseases in Africa. It is a leading cause of death in the developing world and also an incredible drain on a country’s development due to lost work and school hours.
I can’t adequately describe the chills, burning fever, exhaustion and nausea provoked by malaria. But it’s more than just a cold. It can kill you. Our family sleeps under mosquito nets every night and we also take a weekly dose of prophylaxis.
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A terrible disease, to be sure — and something that I worry whenever I visit a tropical zone. But still, don’t you think the day is named oddly? It is almost as if it is celebrating malaria, and wishing it on the entire world — like “World Soccer Day.”
It is actually seen as something of a celebration of the positive steps that are being taken to eradicate this disease. I admit the message seems mixed with a “turn your blog black” campaign!
To mix things up even more, I find the mosquito to be one of the most amazing and beautiful of God’s creatures. They weigh micrograms and yet possess cunning and the ability to fly. Amazing.
And another mixed up thing: the image of Gordon Brown in their sidebar has “Desmond Tutu Archbishop Emeritus” for its alternate text.
Great strides have been made in many places in the fight against malaria, a disease that kills a million people, most of them children, every year. That’s what World Malaria Day is all about. It draws attention to the many successful ways the war against malaria is being waged, mainly through the distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets and other relatively low-tech preventive measures. Unfortunately, children in the Democratic Republic of Congo remain highly vulnerable.
According to the World Health Organization, less than 1% of DRC children under five years of age sleep under protective nets. This results in most of them suffering six to ten malaria-related fever incidents per year. The disease also accounts for 45% of childhood mortality, which overall runs to 20%. In short, malaria kills nearly one in ten children in the Congo every year.
In Heart of Diamonds, my novel of the Congo, I explore how continuous armed conflict in the country is responsible for many of these deaths. Medical supplies can’t be distributed when roads, railroads, and airstrips have been destroyed. Treatment can’t be delivered by medical personnel who have been chased from their clinics and hospitals. People driven from their homes, plagued by malnutrition, inadequate shelter, and lack of sanitary facilities are weak and less capable of warding off disease. War creates a breeding ground for death by malaria just as surely as swamps full of stagnant water breed anopheles mosquitoes.
Although the intensity of conflict has decreased since the truce of 2003 and democratic elections of 2006, millions of displaced persons still struggle to survive and hot spots remain in the eastern and western provinces. Collapsed infrastructure has severely weakened the health system in the DRC, and the strengthening process is a slow one.
The DRC, unfortunately, has little to celebrate this World Malaria Day.
Growing up in Alaska, I can assure you that the mosquitos there weighed far more than a few micrograms – they were the unofficial “state bird”!