Malaria kills 1.1 million people every year, most of them children, this Day seeks to remind the world of its responsibility to commit the resources needed to control this preventable and treatable disease.
Africa Malaria Day 2005 marks the fifth anniversary of the Abuja Declaration when Heads of State or senior representatives from 44 malaria-afflicted countries in Africa agreed to a series of interim goals to be attained by 2005 and to a halving of the world's malaria burden by 2010.
What is malaria?
Malaria is a life-threatening parasitic disease transmitted from person to person through the bite of a female Anopheles mosquito.
The impact of malaria in Africa
The disease exerts its heaviest toll in Africa, where around 90% of the more than one million deaths from malaria worldwide occur each year, this constitutes 10% of the continent's overall disease burden.
Up to 30% of Africa's malaria deaths are in countries undergoing emergency situations in which war, civil strife, food shortages and displacement affect large civilian populations.
Malaria deaths during these events usually far exceed those caused by the conflict at the root of the emergency itself. The chaos, which follows war or civil unrest, can destroy health systems, cut food supplies and expose people to multiple infections. Poor living conditions in temporary camps and war-affected towns can increase both vector and water born disease transmission, eroding an individual's immune system.
Close to 3000 children die of malaria every day (RBM:2003).
Burundi 3.5 Million in 7 months were infected by malaria.
Multiple drug resistance extends to effective but more toxic anti-malarial
drugs.
Malaria is concentrated in tropical areas where the population are low
income earners
Great need for effective anti-malarial drugs VS low resources for research
from pharmaceutical firms
Different Stages of Plasmodium
P. falciparum is the most dangerous form of malaria in humans.
The parasite's trophozoite form invades erythrocytes of any age and can produce overwhelming parasitaemia.
Unlike other forms of malaria, (P. vivax and P. oviale), P. falciparum does not recycle a second time through the liver.
