Because we can always use some good news

Just last week I mentioned the renewed hope for the eradication of polio from Nigeria, one of just four nations in the world where it persists. But that's not the only killer that we in the US just never think about any more, in fact there's one that's much worse: malaria.

According to the World Health Organization's World Malaria Report 2008, about half the world's population was at risk for malaria in 2006. Half of the high-risk group within that group were in Africa. There were an estimated 247 million cases of malaria in 2006, with 86% of them in Africa. An estimated 881,000 people died of malaria that year, of which over 90% were in Africa and the vast majority were children under five.

So it was good to read this from Interpress News:

Hot on the heels of Mauritius, health experts predict Swaziland will be the second country in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to eliminate malaria. ...

The SADC Malaria Strategic Plan - a malaria elimination programme that aims to wipe out the disease in the region - lists Swaziland, South Africa, Botswana and Namibia as countries where malaria elimination is possible. Swaziland is likely to be the first country of the four to reach this goal.

If Swaziland manages to eradicate malaria for three consecutive years, the World Health Organisation (WHO) will declare the country a malaria-free zone and issue a certificate of elimination.

Mauritius was the first SADC country to receive the certificate after the last case of malaria was reported on the southern African island in 1997. Mauritius was therewith the first country in the region to reach one of the Millennium Development Goals whose target it is to stop malaria by 2015.

And now it appears Swaziland soon be the second. It has already cut malaria cases from 45,000 in 2000 to less than 10,000 in 2007.

The strengthened program calls for better monitoring, the introduction of both improved medicines and rapid diagnostic tests to speed up the start of treatment, and - and this is the underlying horror of the whole business - mosquito nets.

Yes, dammit, mosquito nets. Plain old mosquito nets. Mosquito nets and insect repellent are two heavy-duty weapons against malaria and for the lack of them, hundreds of millions of people live at risk of contracting the disease because they are too poor to afford simple mosquito nets for their families. It is a shock and it is a shame to realize again how much could be done with how little.

Swaziland has just received a grant from the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria which it will use to expand its program of distributing the netting.

Last year, each homestead was given one net per pregnant woman and another one for children under the age of five. Now, the organisation aims to provide each person in a household with a mosquito net.

"Each household will receive three (more) nets, which should be enough because Swaziland has an average of six people per household," said [National Malaria Control Programme manager Simon] Kunene.

Anson Zwane of the WHO praised Swaziland for having already met a standard of cutting malaria cases by half, a goal previously set for 2010. But he had one concern: complacency, the fear that because of the progress, "policy makers might lose interest," figuring malaria cases would continue to drop on their own.

"That would be fatal," he said. In more ways than one.

Footnote: Nothing But Nets is a private nonprofit that raises money to buy and distribute mosquito nets in Africa. So far, nearly 750,000 such nets have been distributed across seven countries. Information is at the link.