Sh1.4b plan to roll back malaria among children

By Elizabeth Mwai

Self-medication is responsible for many malaria deaths among children in Nyanza.

Residents of the province use herbs and painkillers to treat children when they have a fever, but the treatment does not cure malaria.

The head of Malaria Division in the Public Health ministry, Elizabeth Juma, says parents take up to two weeks to take a child with fever to hospital.

"Mothers give their children pain killers and once the fever subsides, they assume that they are okay only for the condition to worsen. By the time they get to hospital, they are at a critical stage," Dr Juma says.

She explains that fever is a symptom of many other disease and hence the need to get professional diagnosis.

Ministry of Health surveys found that less than 30 per cent of mothers go to hospitals within 24 hours of their children developing fever.

Reverse

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To reverse the trend, Pfizer, a multinational drug company, has launched an ambitious multi-million shilling project.

The Sh1.4 billion project will educate mothers and health-workers how to detect if a child has malaria and the importance of seeking diagnosis from hospitals promptly.

It will also create awareness on the importance of adherence to the new line of treatment, Artemisinin Combination Therapy drugs (Acts).

Pfizer Vice-President for Corporate Responsibility, Caroline Roan, says it is unacceptable that 16,000 children die from malaria every year.

"Our goal is to educate mothers to take their children to hospitals quickly in case of fever," she says.

Medics say malaria deaths can be reduced if mothers avoid delays in taking children with fever to hospital.

She explains that Nyanza was selected for the five-year pilot project because malaria is endemic in the region.

Pfizer will implement the programme in collaboration with Ministry of Health and Population Service International.

Harmful

Educators will move from one household to another teaching mothers and gathering information why people delay in going to hospitals.

It will also examine the harmful practices that people adopt when dealing with malaria.

Already 60 health workers at Cheroibo Provincial Rural Health Training Health centre in Kisumu East have been trained to detect and manage malaria. A total of 1,000 are targeted.

Daily, the centre receives about 200 patients of which 40 to per cent have malaria.

In Bondo alone about 100,000 women will be targeted.

The research, Roan says, will enrich existing methods employed by the Health ministry combat malaria.

"We want to know what works and share the information with other stakeholders to improve on ways to combat the disease," she says.

Research show that HIV transmission is higher in malaria endemic areas.