Help to kick out malaria by 2017

Kenya joins the global community in commemorating World Malaria Day on Sunday at a very optimistic moment with evidence that the disease can actually be brought under control or even eliminated.

The country aims to kick malaria out of Kenya in seven years in an expensive campaign that could cost more than $100 million annually.

The past decade saw malaria prevalence drop from a high of 70 per cent to about 40 per cent today, which translates to less hospitalisation and deaths among infants and pregnant women -- those most at risk from the disease.

This proves that the current tools for fighting malaria, which included highly effective medicines, insecticide treated bed nets and indoor spraying, are actually working.

From today we have less than a year to meet the universal mosquito net coverage for all populations at risk. This means by the end of this year the malaria community must provide nets to more than 10 million Kenyans who need them but do not have access to them.

To achieve the ambitious goals the country must massively scale up the use of the World Health Organisation’s recommended first line treatment for malaria.

Although Kenya has officially long adopted the use of the highly effective anti-malarials, their actual use on the ground is less than 10 per cent.

The global malaria community is concerned about the continued use of inappropriate malaria medicines in Kenya that could lead to the development of untreatable strains that are more expensive and difficult to manage.

Already in some parts of the world signs of resistance to treated nets and the new medicines have begun to appear. This is why Kenya must apply the recent WHO new malaria treatment guidelines that require all suspected cases to be tested before treatment.

Treating confirmed cases will ensure that patients get medicines for the right ailments, a reduction of wastage of expensive drugs and reducing the chances of the parasite developing resistant strains.

This will require the support of all Kenyans to succeed. Individuals who think they have malaria must avoid self medication because this could, in the long term, lower the drugs’ efficacy as well as be a health risk to the user.

The government must reduce the recurrence of drug stock-outs in public facilities that leads to the prescription of inappropriate drugs or under-dosing.

The use of correct diagnostics and malaria testing must also increase to ensure that the right treatment is given and that people are not treated with anti-malarial drugs when they do not have the illness.

The success of the new ‘‘no diagnosis no treatment’’ campaign will gauge how well prepared we are to handle the world’s first malaria vaccine when it hits the market -- perhaps in the next five years.

While we take stock of our achievements today, it is also time to ask the hard question for the future. In 2008, the government provided a paltry Sh2.4 million of the over Sh4.5 billion that went to pay for malaria control.

The bulk of these funds were sourced from international donor agencies that are either facing difficulties in raising money or, like the Global Fund, are not satisfied with the country’s accountability procedures.

By last year, the total annual global funding for malaria reached about $2.0 billion, far less than the estimated $6.0 billion required.