WORLD MALARIA DAY, THE CONNECTION BETWEEN MALARIA AND OUR ENVIRONMENT IN AFRICAby | 26-04-2014 01:00 |
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  Africa as a continent, is one place where this killer disease,Malaria, still thrives. I never believed that Malaria was such a deadly disease, I viewed it as one of those diseases that would come and go easily without being much of a threat to the patient. But hey,I was wrong in my assertion. Malaria has indeed been a thorn in the flesh of it sufferers and can lead to many things including temporal madness. It doesn't help that statistics suggests that a child dies every minute in Africa of malaria. According to WHO,in 2012,there were about 207 million cases with an estimated 627 000 deaths. Again, knowing that malaria kills over 300,000 people in Nigeria,with majority of them kids, is all the more worrisome. Malaria is transmitted by mosquito bites and it is here that I have a lot of interest. Since we know the role of mosquito in Malaria, one would have thought we will easily get over it, but then,have we made basic plans on how effectively get over it? It seems we are all too ready to wait for the vaccines but why not nip it in bud at the mosquito transmission stage where we know we can? Mosquito lives,generally, in an unhealthy aquatic environment, yes, we know this. And we also know that it loves breeding in stagnant water where it can comfortably reproduce in millions. We are also aware of how a comfortable environment for mosquito aids malaria. The question remains, have we done enough to make the environment inhabitable for mosquito? Have we been able to clear mosquito from our environment as that is the basic solution to Malaria? Here in my community,you can find breeding grounds for mosquito littered almost all over the drainage channels. This is because most drainage channels here are blocked allowing water to be stagnant for long thereby offering the mosquito a suitable environment to raise its young ones. The longer such a drainage is left unclean, the more endangered that environment is as the mosquito will continue to reproduce in millions hence any home they attack in their numbers,will most likely,not escape Malaria. The most worrying part is that some drainages are very close to peoples home and when left unclean,takes its toll on inhabitants of such environment. Also,some carelessly developed dump sites, which afford mosquitoes enough breeding ground,are so close to living environment and in such case,Malaria is inevitable. However, we have mosquito nets to help stop this mosquitoes from entering homes, but how effective are the nets? We also have insecticides that can be used to kill the mosquitoes but the mosquitoes are now developing resistance to such Insecticides as it no longer kills them. Vaccines have also been developed but the constantly changing form of the disease has made it hard for the vaccines to fight it. But what happens if we keep our environment clean, mosquito will have no breeding place,no home and will die off. This for me is the most potent way of dealing with Malaria. So,I recommend that the World Health Organization(WHO) should look more into this direction,channel its energy and resources towards this path and nip Malaria in the bud at its earliest stage. Knowing that many kids never made it to earth owing to miscarriages caused by Malaria,knowing that many lives(mostly children under 5 years of age) have been lost to Malaria, knowing that some mothers have been denied the chance of cuddling their baby owing to Malaria, makes me think of how these situations could have been saved had we prioritized the cleanliness of our environment. Nonetheless, it is not too late to still save a live with your actions. Winning this Malaria war requires a collective effort and cleaning your environment is among the least you can contribute. As we mark the World Malaria Day today, let's understand that the onus is on us to care for the environment, to save families that could have been affected and more importantly, to save a great number of the world's population that are endangered. Clean your environment today and save a live for the future. |
