Share & more
Brick-making, an important economic activity in the highlands of western Kenya, may be the cause of recent malaria epidemics in the area, where the disease was not naturally endemic, a recent study has shown.
The study, conducted by researchers from the Department of Tropical Medicine at Tulane University in the US city of New Orleans in collaboration with their colleagues from the Kenya-based International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology, showed that brick-making generated dry season habitats for malaria vectors in western Kenya.
The research findings were published by the BMC Public Health, an online journal that carries research articles. It is available at www.biomedcentral.com/bmcpublichealth/.
The study, conducted mainly in Mosocho division of Kisii district, concluded that the malaria-causing Anopheles mosquitoes flourished in the brick-making pits in part because the standing water did not contain predators to the same degree that natural swamps do.
The incidence of highland malaria and frequency of epidemics have been increasing in western Kenya since the 1980s, with severe outbreaks in 1995, 1998/99 and May-July 2002. Fifteen districts in the region are now considered epidemic-prone by the Kenyan government.
The UN World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 300 to 500 million people are diagnosed with malaria annually, causing 1.1 to 2.7 million deaths. Approximately 1 million of these deaths are among children in sub-Saharan Africa, where 90 percent of all malaria cases occur.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
