Some Facts:
- Malaria endangers 1 in every 6 Indian
- costing the economy $2 billion in lost productivity each year
- routinely pulls children out of school,
- plunges countless families into crushing debt, and
- leads to agonising, expensive death
- India accounted for 6% of global malaria cases and 7% of deaths caused by it in 2016, according to a report released by the World Health Organisation (WHO)
- WHO figures also suggest that India is unlikely to reduce its case burden beyond 40% by 2020
Context
- The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare’s plan to eliminate malaria by 2027.
- It aims to eradicate the mosquito-borne disease from India three years ahead of the global deadline set by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
New plan approach
- It is the country’s first time-bound malaria elimination programme since the National Malaria Eradication Programme was aborted in the late 1960s.
- Since the 1970s, the thrust of India’s anti-malaria programme has been on controlling the disease.
- The National Vector and Disease Control Progamme, 2004, the plan’s predecessor, too aimed at “controlling” malaria.
- There are time-bound targets for all districts, based on their vulnerability to malaria.
- The plan lays emphasis on awareness programmes, entomological surveillance and outbreak warning systems — methods that have contributed to eradicating malaria in several parts of the world, including Sri Lanka.
Challenges
- Official statistics are wrong. They show that only 300 people died of malaria last year while independent studies claim that number to be 50,000
- It leads to broken malaria control program
- Threadbare and chronically understaffed clinics often turn sick patients away or refer them to overcrowded district hospitals.
- Mosquito nets and pesticide sprays are seldom deployed on time or in sufficient quantities.
India’s Vulnerability to malaria
- Malaria parasite has been particularly resilient for centuries.
- Plasmodium vivax parasite responsible for almost 50 per cent of India’s malaria burden has adapted to anti-malarial drugs.
WHO Report:
- Bhutan, Nepal, Thailand, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Indonesia, says the WHO, are among the countries poised to reduce malaria incidence by over 40% by 2020.
- India — due to low funding per person at risk and resistance to certain frontline insecticides — is only expected to achieve a 20%-40% reduction.
- In 2016, an estimated Rs. 13,000 crore was invested in malaria control and elimination efforts globally by governments of malaria endemic countries and their international partners.
- The majority (74%) of investments in 2016 was spent in the WHO’s Africa region, followed by the WHO regions of Southeast Asia (7%), the Eastern Mediterranean and the Americas (each 6%), and the Western Pacific (4%).
- “India has reduced its new malaria cases by one third, and even crossed the malaria mortality targets of 2020,” said Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare J.P. Nadda at a high-level round table on ‘Accelerating the Elimination of Malaria in the Southeast Asia Region’.
- He further added that with nearly three-fourths of the share of the regional burden, India’s successes had significantly contributed to the reduction of the burden of malaria for the entire Southeast Asia region.
- The Union Minister noted that a majority of malaria cases in the country occurred in its bordering districts, forests and tribal areas.
Way forward
- Compared to several other communicable diseases, malaria is not a particularly complex disease. What we need to do is to stop mosquitoes from transmitting the parasite or make the parasite ineffective.
- Beefing up indigenous research on the disease
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