Government announces new policy on malaria treatment

The Kenyan government has announced a new anti-malaria policy which encourages the use of more effective combination drugs for treatment, alongside the promotion of insecticide-treated nets to prevent exposure to mosquitoes that carry the disease. Health Minister Charity Ngilu said in a statement to mark the annual Africa Malaria Day on Sunday that her government was trying to find US $20 million a year to implement the new policy. "Over 70 percent of the population (approximately 20 million Kenyans) are at the risk of disease, which claims 34,000 children annually (approximately 93 children per day)," Ngilu said. "The burden is mainly felt in children below five years and pregnant women." According to the Kenyan health ministry, the effectiveness of the drugs which were widely used to treat malaria since the 1980s had declined, leading to "documented, exceptionally high treatment failure rates". These drugs included choloroquine and later Sulfadoxine-Pyrimethamine (SP). "Kenya, like many other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, has thus been faced with the difficult but urgent decision to replace the failing SP with a more effective treatment for malaria. New and more effective drugs have been developed... whose combinations include artemesinin derivatives," the ministry said in a statement. The Kenya government, it added, was therefore encouraging the use of a combination drug made up of artemeter and lumefantrine, under the brand name Coartem. It is manufactured by the Swiss-based Novartis Pharmaceuticals. These drugs, the ministry said, had been used for treating fevers in traditional Chinese medicine for some 2,000 years. "They combine properties of rapid malaria-parasite clearance with an ability to reduce transmission of new infections by acting on the sexual stage of the parasite in man," it said. Malaria in Kenya, the ministry added, occurred all over the country, but was most prevalent in Nyanza, Coast and Western provinces. Malaria is a life-threatening parasitic disease transmitted by mosquitoes. Approximately 40 percent of the world's population, mostly those living in the world's poorest countries, is at risk of malaria, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). The disease causes at least one million deaths annually, of which 90 percent occur in sub-Saharan Africa, mostly among young children. According to WHO, malaria kills an African child every 30 seconds. Many children who survive the disease may suffer from learning impairments or brain damage, while pregnant women and their unborn children are also vulnerable. Artemisinin-based combination drugs, according to WHO, provide a highly effective new medicine to treat malaria. Since 2001, WHO has strongly encouraged countries where there is resistance to conventional treatments to switch to combination drugs. Africa Malaria Day, marked on 25 April, commemorates the day in 2000 when African heads of state from 50 malaria-affected countries signed the Abuja Declaration that committed their countries to achieve specific targets on malaria prevention and control by 2005.