Chronicle Editor
Rumbidzayi Zinyuke Mutare Bureau
THE Health and Child Care Ministry is on course to complete the ongoing anti-malaria drive in Manicaland next month despite the wet spell which hit most parts of the country last week and is expected to continue for several weeks. The programme, which commenced in October, is targeting to spray all the seven districts of the province to control deaths associated with the disease.
Provincial medical director for Manicaland Dr Patron Mafaune said while there had been little challenges encountered so far, some of the teams had stopped spraying when the rains started, especially in Chipinge and Chimanimani districts.
“For the four districts -Mutasa, Mutare, Chimaninimani and Nyanga – we will need about 30-35 days of spraying. We still have time even though there probably will be instances where the teams will have to stop because of the rains. We are hopeful that we will at least finish without any problems,” she said.
“We were worried that we would not be able to reach Chipinge if the rains persisted because some parts would be inaccessible. Fortunately, we started with that district. We have fewer wards that are targeted for spraying in Makoni and Buhera.”
She said by early next week, the teams would be done with Chipinge and move on to Makoni and finally Buhera. Dr Mafaune said weekly updates on the disease’s trend showed that no malaria deaths had been recorded in the week ending November 5, 2017. However, she said, 863 confirmed malaria cases had been recorded during the same period.
“We are now entering the malaria season, but we expect the cases to start going down in most areas that have been sprayed because of the effectiveness of the interventions we have made.
“We do not expect the areas that have been sprayed to experience any challenges,” she said. She added that there were few cases of malaria reported in Burma Valley, which went down after the area was sprayed. For the anti-malaria drive, Government is using dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) in Chipinge, Makoni and Buhera districts, and orgsanophosphates in Mutasa, Mutare, Nyanga and Chimanimani.
Online Reporter