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People & Their Problems
New Delhi, 13 June 2008
War Against Malaria
NEED TO DEVELOP NEW
WEAPONS
By Radhakrishna Rao
The ancient scourge of malaria, which on an average kills around
one million people in tropical countries and is a major public health challenge
has now received a shot in the arm from the steady increase in the global
warming brought about by an increased emission of green house gases. According
to the Malaria Research Centre (MRC) in New
Delhi the variations in temperature could increase the
incidence of malaria even in areas with low temperature that are not infested
with the mosquito which spreads the disease. Now they will also have more
incidence of malaria because of global warming and rise in temperature.
Incidentally, the mosquito strains spreading malaria do not
breed in locations where the temperature is below 18 degrees, according to
renowned malaria expert Dr. Dhiman. In order to attract global attention on the
threat posed by malaria in tropical countries, the United Nations (UN) has marked
25 April as the World Malaria Day. Observed UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon,
“ending malarial deaths can breathe a new life into our broader campaign to
stamp out poverty, once for all. It is one of the key millennium development
goals — the vision adopted by all the world’s governments for building a better
world in the 21st century. We have all the resources and know-how.”
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated that
more than one million lives could be saved annually if insecticide-treated bed
nets were used in malaria endemic zones. Significantly, India’s Health
Ministry has taken up a project to introduce insecticide bed nets on a large
scale in malaria-prone regions of the country. According to WHO’s Regional
Advisor on malaria Dr. Krong Thong Thimasain, “around 548 million Indians live
in malaria-endemic areas. The number of long lasting nets required to cover the
population at risk in India
is 30 million”.
In a development that could help fight malaria with greater
vigour, medical researchers have devised a technique that is much faster and
more cost-effective than the current diagnostics techniques. An international
team led by researchers at Exeter
and Coventry Universities have a perfected a technique that uses a magnetic
optic system to detect haemozoin, a waste product of the malaria parasite in
the human blood circulation system. Parallelly, the team has developed a devise
which gives a positive or negative reading for malaria in less than a minute.
In another significant development, French researches at the
Pasteur Institute have reported trials of a malarial vaccine that mimics the
natural immunity some people develop against the disease. However, the vaccine
would need to undergo a series of further rigorous trails before it is accepted
for mass use. Conversely, the biggest problem associated with a malarial
vaccine is that the antigen the vaccine could target might vary depending on
what stage of its life cycle the parasite is at. In other words, a single
vaccine might not work against all the strains of the disease-causing germ.
Of the four malarial parasites, Plasmodium Falciparum is by
far the most dangerous and virulent, especially to the under-nourished, weak and
young. In recent years, there has been a steady resurgence in malarial
incidence in India.
States like Karnataka, Orissa and the North-East region have been reporting an
increasing number of malarial cases.
Besides, in keeping with the national trend, urban centres
like Mumbai, Mangalore and Goa have also
reported a spurt in malarial cases mainly due to the migration of people from
various parts of the country. Mangalore has been witnessing a sharp increase in
malaria cases due to the unsanitary conditions created by a boom in real estate
and construction activities. Notwithstanding, a 1988 WHO strategy to
substantially reduce the cases of malaria by 2010.
Indeed, the proliferation of slums and shanty towns in the
urban centres of the country has contributed in a big way to the explosive
spread of this emaciating disease leading to a loss of “productive manpower.” Sadly,
the conventional method of monitoring the potential breeding ground of the
disease-spreading mosquito strains across the urban India sprawl has become a
cumbersome and complex task in terms of money, time and human resources.
Against such a bleak scenario, the MRC has been making use
of the high resolution data available on a string of earth observation and weather
monitoring spacecraft systems to map the potential malariogenic areas in the
country. In the long run, the repeated observation from space over a period of
time could provide comparable data which would add to the malaria eradication
strategy.
But the grim ground reality is that in recent years, the
much-touted malaria control programme in India
and other Third World countries has run into
rough weather owing to the parasites causing the disease developing resistance
to potent anti-malarial drugs and to a range of potent pesticides. According to
a WHO spokesman, “our biggest concern is to treat patients with safe and effective
medication to avoid the problem of drug resistance.”
Plainly, drug resistance is now a major problem in the war
against malaria. For instance, sulfa doxine pyrimthanine, which was 100%
effective about two decades back, has now lost much of its efficacy and punch.
Thus to control malaria we need safer water, efficient public health
facilities, education, supply of latest genre drugs and insecticide-coated bed
nets to people vulnerable to malarial infection.
Simultaneously, researchers working on devising new and
novel strategies to combat malaria are veering round the view that climatic
fluctuations could be used to predict the spread of malaria. Researchers are
quite optimistic that the system which is based on computer models of climate
change can predict outbreak upto five months in advance. ---- INFA
(Copyright, India News & Feature
Alliance)
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