Mozambique said on Friday it is stepping up a prevention campaign against malaria, the country’s third-biggest killer after cholera and Aids, by encouraging the use of mosquito nets and looking at new treatments.
Malaria, caused by a parasite carried by the Anopheles mosquito, killed 3 200 people in Mozambique last year out of a total of 4,5-million cases, the Health Ministry said in a statement, two days ahead of Africa Malaria Day.
The worst affected area is the northern Nampula region with 627 fatalities, followed by the southern Maputo province with 471 deaths, said the statement.
Authorities have been encouraging the use of mosquito nets and are trying to raise public awareness among children, who are the most affected along with pregnant women.
”We think that by educating children we will be securing successes in the struggle against malaria,” National Director of Health Alexandre Manguel said.
The Health Ministry is also planning to introduce a new line of antimalarial drugs to replace chloroquine, to which the parasite carried by the mosquitoes has grown resistant in recent years.
Mozambique is also battling an outbreak of cholera that has claimed 100 lives this year out of about 20 000 reported cases, according to official statistics.
The majority of cholera cases have been reported in the capital, Maputo, and the central city of Beira, where about 50 000 people were earlier this year vaccinated on an experimental basis.
The Health Ministry is also awaiting the results next month of trials on an orally administered vaccine for cholera.
HIV/Aids has been another health plague but authorities have not published any figures of the number of deaths from the disease.
Mozambique, with a population of more than 17-million, has an adult HIV prevalence rate of 16% with about 700 new infections daily. — Sapa-AFP