WHO gives Brazzaville hospitals 1,000 mosquito nets

The United Nations World Health Organisation (WHO) on Thursday donated 1,000 insecticide-treated mosquito nets to three hospitals in the Republic of Congo (ROC) capital, Brazzaville. "Malaria is one of the diseases for which people in developing countries, and in Africa in particular, pay an especially high price," said Dr Lamine Sarr, the WHO representative in ROC, during a ceremony to present the nets. He said that while each net cost only US $5, they were helping to reduce infant mortality in Africa by 20 percent. The recipients were Talangai Hospital in the north of the city, Blanche Gomez in the centre and Makelekele Hospital in the south. Sarr noted that as pregnant women and young children were particularly vulnerable to malaria, the hospitals should give priority to installing the nets in maternity and pediatric wards. The contribution was part of ongoing support from WHO and the government of ROC of the global "Roll Back Malaria" campaign [http://mosquito.who.int]. According to Sarr, malaria is the cause of more than 30 percent of all medical consultations on the African continent, and that of these cases, some 500,000 will affect the patients' brains, of whom 20 percent will die and seven percent will suffer permanent neurological damage. About 300 million cases of malaria are reported worldwide annually, resulting in one million deaths - 90 percent of which are in Africa. Most of those killed on the continent are children. One out of every five African children dies from malaria before the age of five.