‘Work together to fight malaria’ in SA, Mozambique and Eswatini

He was only 13 when Lameck Anyango, a journalism and mass communication student from the University of Nairobi, was first infected with malaria – and no medications were available.

As the world observed World Malaria Day yesterday, Anyango told of his fight against the disease that still kills a child every 60 seconds, according to Goodbye Malaria.

Malaria victim’s experience

Anyango experienced fever, body aches, chills and a headache, and also vomited. The hospital confirmed later it was malaria.

“Growing up in a rural village [in Kenya], accessing medical treatment was not readily available,” said Anyango.

“I turned to herbal remedies and, because they were not working, lost weight. I took a loan to get treatment.”

Goodbye Malaria has urged governments, business and non-profit sectors to work together to eliminate malaria in southern Africa by 2030.

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While malaria is a preventable and curable disease, tremendous progress had been made to curb the disease in Africa, it said.

Malaria cost Africa around R228bn annually

Sherwin Charles, CEO of Goodbye Malaria, said the “mosquito-borne infection” cost Africa around $12 billion (about R228 billion) annually, and in places where infections were recurring, up to 60% of school children had impaired learning ability.

“SA had more than 7 800 malaria cases last year. Although community transmission is low, an outbreak could put nearly five million people in KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and Mpumalanga at risk of getting the disease,” he noted.

“Bringing malaria risk to zero at home will not happen without coordinated malaria control efforts between South Africa, Eswatini and Mozambique,” Charles said.

249 million cases were recorded globally in 2022

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, 249 million cases were recorded globally in 2022, resulting in 608 000 deaths – 76% were children under five.

“The challenges to effective malaria control include ensuring there’s effective coverage of essential intervention like indoor residual spraying, patients have easy access to effective diagnosis and treatment, and communities in malaria endemic areas remember malaria when they have a fever,” said Jaishree Raman, principal medical scientist at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases.

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