UK blames Africans for malaria cases

NAIROBI: Kenyans and other Africans living in the UK may face new specific malaria control guidelines.

This follows a report that immigrants are importing the disease to the host country at a very high rate.

The guidelines may also be implemented by other European countries with medical researchers saying although the diaspora know the danger of contracting malaria when they visit their countries of origin, they are not following the laid-down guidelines.

A study by among others the Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri) and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, suggests radical measures to reduce cases of malaria importation to UK from Africa.

ADVICE IGNORED

Measures currently in place include advice that such people take preventive malaria pills before travelling home, sleep under nets, avoid mosquito bites and seek professional medical attention upon the onset of fever.

But the diaspora visitors are ignoring this advice, says the study published last week in the Malaria Journal, hence putting their lives and those of their hosts in danger.

The medical experts including those from the Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand, and Oxford University, UK, suggest the introduction of specific malaria prevention guidelines for Africans separate from those of other travellers from the rest of the world.

The study says the suggestion is informed by evidence that when the Africans come home they do not take malaria prevention pills, do not sleep under nets and when sick many go for substandard medications.

“While this group is aware of the need to avoid mosquito bites, very few were willing to sleep under an insecticide-treated bed net,” the study says.

The report adds that visitors from the diaspora were unlikely to comply with advice from public health authorities on the use of preventive malaria medicine.

“The use of preventive medicine among African visitors from the diaspora has been found to be considerably lower than among other travellers to malaria-endemic destinations,” it reads in part.

While there is a higher incidence of malaria among African immigrants, the authors say they are much less likely to die from the disease compared to their hosts.

“While malaria disproportionately affects travellers visiting friends and relatives in Africa, the death rates from the disease in this group is eight times lower than in tourists and other business travellers,” says the study.

The authors suggest that Africans travelling home be provided with pills, which they can use to treat themselves if they get a fever while in their home countries.