Moving disease to the next level

Kenya has seen Malaria deaths drop from 32,000 to 25,000 annually in the recent past. But this still means that we are losing 25,000 potential heroes who might make a difference globally, just like US President Barack Obama did. Most of them are children under five.

Their deaths can be avoided by making available prompt diagnosis and effective treatment. This has already been demonstrated in areas of intense research at the Coast and in the Lake Victoria basin.

The death of children involved in the studies has been reduced to almost nil due to intense follow-up and greater access to care. These gains were achieved with tools less perfect than what we have today and are likely to have tomorrow. This holds out the hope that, with better focus, we can achieve more and let our children and grandchildren survive.

Insecticide-treated nets can reduce illness and death in children and pregnant women, but it took more than 10 years to deploy them in large enough scale to show any impact.

This pattern has been repeated in treatment, artemisinin-based combination therapies for uncomplicated malaria, and artesunate for severe malaria.

This is a wake-up call for researchers. While it is great to come up with new innovations, it is immoral to derail policy formulation and implementation due to the academic intrigues that plagued the adoption of some interventions. The bureaucrats who take too long to translate new innovations into policy when lives are at stake cannot be excused either.

We need forward-planning to ensure that policy-makers and researchers are in sync on new interventions, and that they fast-track implementation once these interventions are found to be effective.

Countries with a high incidence of malaria are keeping an eager eye on the prospect of a vaccine becoming a reality in the near future. As a leader in a country ravaged by malaria, I will be watching closely the progress of Phase III RTS,S that will be launched this year.

KENYA IS PLAYING A MAJOR ROLE in this development through the Kenya Medical Research Institute, which has three sites – Kombewa and Siaya in Nyanza and Kilifi on the Coast – involving thousands of Kenyan children.

The research will be conducted by local scientists led by Walter Otieno, Patricia Njuguna, Simon Kariuki and Bernhards Ogutu. We expect a successful outcome.

My office is ready to assist the various arms of government to galvanise the support required to see that the Kenyan child who needs this vaccine can access it as soon as it becomes available.

The malaria research fraternity has come a long way in developing a vaccine candidate that is 60 per cent effective in infants. All that is required now is the support to get it to the next level.

Africa’s political leaders went to Abuja in 2000 and set targets for malaria control. We need to live by them and we look up to our health researchers and policy technocrats to keep us on track to deliver on our declarations.

We singled out targets to be achieved by 2010. It is time we took a candid look at what our National Malaria Control Programmes have achieved so far.

In his closing remarks at Abuja, then Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said: “Today we have begun to write the final chapter of the history of malaria.

We have raised the hopes and expectations of our people. We must not let them down. We cannot afford to let them down. May malaria be rolled out and development rolled in all African countries.”

Those sentiments are as relevant today as they were nine years ago.

Mr Odinga is Kenya’s Prime Minister.