Malaria killed nearly one million people worldwide in 2006, with children under five and African countries bearing the brunt, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Thursday.
”There were an estimated 247-million malaria cases among 3,3-billion people at risk in 2006, causing nearly a million deaths, mostly of children under fiver years,” the WHO said in its Annual Malaria Report.
A total of 109 countries were endemic for malaria in 2008, nearly half (45) in Africa, it noted.
Countries still lack sufficient resources to tackle the disease and even though public health services are procuring more anti-malaria medicines, access to treatment is still inadequate in all countries surveyed, the WHO said.
However, WHO director general Margaret Chan told journalists that more progress had been made in the two years since the data had been collected.
”I am personally confident that we will have even better news next year. Right now, the momentum continues to build,” she said.
She called on pharmaceutical companies to increase research and development into new artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) amid reports some patients are beginning to show signs of resistance to this WHO-recommended treatment.
”We are down to pretty well the last effective medicine, artemisinin, and the old anti-malarials have developed resistance to a different extent,” Chan said.
”We are now beginning to hear reports about possible tolerance to artemisinin, and we are working with partners … to find out exactly what is happening on the ground,” she added.
The report said that most African countries are way off meeting the 80% coverage target for the four main treatments — mosquito nets, drugs, indoor insecticide spray and treatment during pregnancy — set by the WHO in 2005.
For example, the survey found that supplies of insecticide-treated nets to national malaria control programmes were only sufficient to protect a quarter (26%) of people in 37 African countries.
More than half of the African cases in 2006 occurred in Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Kenya, the WHO said.
Deaths due to the mosquito-borne disease are estimated to sap more than a full percentage point from the annual economic growth of the most affected nations. — Sapa