Zanzibar sprays households in anti-malaria effort

Health officials in Tanzania's semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar on Monday began spraying thousands of households with a non-toxic insecticide in an effort to control the breeding of mosquitoes that transmit malaria, Africa's top killer.

At least 452 workers took part in spraying the households with the lambda-cyhalothrin (ICON) chemical in the campaign dubbed Indoor Residual Spray. Zanzibar's chief minister, Shamsi Vuai Nahodha, officially launched the campaign on Sunday at Mpapa village in the central part of Unguja Island, about 22km south of the capital, Stone Town, at a ceremony attended by thousands of villagers and students, as well as US embassy officials.

Unguja and Pemba islands make up Zanzibar, with a population of about 981,754, according to a 2002 census. The spraying, expected to go on for 54 days, will be done in all districts of Unguja and Pemba under the supervision of the Zanzibar Malaria Control Programme (ZMCP).

"All political and religious leaders in the island should make sure this exercise is a success," Nahodha said, adding: "We acknowledge the US assistance to combat malaria." In 1960s and 1970s, the US also supported anti-malaria campaigns on the island through the World Health Organization.

The Zanzibar minister of health and social welfare, Sultani Mohamed Mugheiry, said the support of the entire community was necessary to ensure Zanzibar would be free of malaria by 2008.

He said spraying of residential houses would continue every six months. A ZMCP malaria expert, Mahdi Ramsan, said 210,292 households would be sprayed in the campaign, which is part of the US President's Anti-Malaria Initiative (PMI), being implemented in Zanzibar under a project known as Kataa Malaria (Swahili language for Reject Malaria).

Ramsan said the spraying was the final stage of the first phase of the Kataa Malaria programme, after "the successful ongoing campaign of using the insecticide treated nets, use of proper malaria treatment, and keeping the surroundings clean".

"We hope we shall reduce malaria prevalence drastically, down from the 31 percent [May 2006 government statistics] to 15 percent or below, by successful spraying," Ramsan said.

Speaking at the launch on Sunday, the US Ambassador to Tanzania, Michael Retzer, said his country was determined to ensure that Zanzibar was free of malaria. "The massive US$2 million campaign to spray inside virtually house in Unguja and Pemba is a lot of progress," he said.

Retzer said President Bush's original goal was to reduce malaria deaths, especially among women and children, by 50 percent. "My guess is that in Zanzibar we will exceed this goal by a large margin; let's prove to millions who are watching from all over the world that here in Zanzibar you can do it."

He said that his country, with the support from the ZMCP, the Centre for Disease Control, and the Global Fund to fight Malaria, HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis, had distributed at least 230,000 insecticide-treated bed nets on the island. He added that rapid diagnostic test kits, providing a quick and accurate diagnosis for malaria, had been purchased in bulk and were on their way for use in Zanzibar.

Zanzibar residents welcomed the efforts to wipe out malaria on the island. A resident and mother of five, Fatma Mussa, said: "I am very happy with the start of the spraying exercise. We hope that in a few months we shall sleep well and forget about malaria."

ZMCP official Ghanima Mbarouk Ussi told IRIN that statistics for malaria prevalence on the island had fallen in the past three years from 48 percent in 2002 to 31 percent in 2006, and that malaria cases in children aged below five years had dropped from 54 percent in 2002 to 38 percent in 2005.

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