Zim make strides in curbing malaria

months later than scheduled, a senior health official has said.
Ministry of Health and Child Welfare malaria project manager Dr Joseph Mberikunashe said the completed districts include all hard-to-reach areas such as Binga, Mola in Kariba and Mudzi among others.
“There are some districts like the Kariba-Mola and Binga, which are hard to reach with interventions once the rainy season begins because roads become impassable owing to flooding. We are glad that these are the districts we started with and have since completed spraying the areas,” Dr Mberikunashe said.
He said the spraying teams have since moved to districts in higher ground and are looking forward to complete spraying next month.
“If chemicals had arrived on time, we were supposed to finish spraying by end of November but as it stands, we hope we will be through by December 21.”
Dr Mberikunashe said all the malaria preparatory work should have been in place by June, but in this case, spraying chemicals only arrived in the country in September, three months late. Zimbabwe has been receiving assistance from the Global Fund to fight malaria with the funds disbursed through the UNDP.
Of late, malaria incidences and deaths are generally going down throughout the country.
Dr Mberikunashe said since January a total of 214 deaths have been recorded as opposed to the thousands of people who used to die annually due to the disease.
About 500 000 people have also been treated since January, a reduction from a million the previous year. Dr Mberikunashe attributed the downward trend to adequate supply of both malaria prevention and control interventions.
“We have been receiving consistent support from our partners such that funding for malaria programmes is increasing gradually from both partners and Government.
“Our spraying coverage and mosquito distribution has been over 80 percent and treatment and medicines have been available all the time. We believe this has played a role in the reduction of malaria incidences and deaths,” he said.
Asked whether Harare is still a malaria free district, Dr Mberikunashe said the environmental conditions are conducive for mosquito breeding but the monitoring system in place so far does not indicate the presence of the malaria transmitting anopheles.
Zimbabwe is now looking forward to elimination of malaria since it has already achieved its global target of halving malaria cases by the year 2015.