Malaria creeping back in capital

The number of malaria cases in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, has risen sharply over the first four months of the year, with the vast majority of new infections found amongst internal migrants who have flocked to the capital in recent years. “In comparison with the same period last year, there has been a rise in malaria. There were 37 cases registered from 1 January to 1 May. Last year at that time we registered only four cases,” Adylbek Juzenov, deputy chair of the Bishkek Epidemiological Department, said in the capital on Wednesday. According to the health ministry, there were about 250 registered cases of the disease in the country in 2005. Malaria is not uncommon in the Central Asian country, though during the Soviet period the disease was virtually eradicated. But it gradually resurfaced after the former Soviet republic became independent in 1991 following the collapse of communism and its healthcare system. In 2002 there were 2,747 people diagnosed with the disease in Kyrgyzstan. By 2004, the Kyrgyz government, with the help of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), was able to reduce the number of malaria cases nationally to just 100. According to the WHO, malaria is an infection caused by a parasite carried from person to person by mosquitoes. It is preventable and treatable, but kills more than 1 million people annually, most of them young children in Africa. Although malaria is very rare in Bishkek, the main reason for its increase is due to internal migration coupled with the current hot weather. Most migrants in the capital are from the southern Osh, Batken and Jalal-Abad provinces, which are vulnerable to the disease. They come to Bishkek in search of work and most live in informal housing with poor sanitation. “Travellers from Afghanistan and Tajikistan are also bringing malaria to Kyrgyzstan,” maintained Nurbulat Usenbaev, head of the Control of Malaria in Kyrgyzstan project funded by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. “It is a very unpredictable disease and this year’s rise is of great concern,” Usenbaev added.