Malaria kills 72 children a day

Malaria is the leading cause of death among children in Kenya, according to findings presented during an inter-country workshop on community-based malaria interventions on Monday. Participants were told that the disease kills 26,000 Kenyan children a year, or an average of 72 a day, according to a report on the workshop carried by the Kenyan newspaper, the ‘East African Standard’, on 12 September. Moreover, malaria accounts for 30 to 50 percent of the country’s overall infant mortality, it said. The report quoted James Sekento of the Malaria Control Programme as saying that pregnant women risked suffering severe anaemia and giving birth to underweight babies because of malaria.