KAMPALA:The Ministry of Health is mooting joint efforts in the fight against malaria among East African Member States.
In an interview on Tuesday, Anifa Kawooya Bangirana, the State Minister for Health in Charge of General Duties, said that they are concerned about the high disease prevalence and concentration among border communities, which raises suspicions that the cases could be imported from the neighboring countries of the regional bloc.
She says that it is high time the East African Community member states worked on joint campaigns that are concurrently implemented so that they can collectively and decisively deal with the malaria epidemics among their citizens.
Kawooya explained that despite the various preventive measures the country has previously rolled out, which include the distribution of free insecticide-treated bed nets, indoor residue spraying, and mobilizing communities to regularly slash their compounds, among other interventions, the country is continuing to grapple with high malaria prevalence and related deaths, which requires some change of strategy.
Kawooya says the Ministry is engaged in high-level discussions with the Stop Malaria Campaign implementing agencies and partners to initiate a comprehensive regional campaign that can help address the problem.
According to disease surveillance reports at the Ministry of Health, the country is recording an unprecedented increase in the number of patients reporting severe forms of malaria, which is causing a daily average of at least 30 deaths.
Kawooya adds that the reports also indicate a sharp increase in the number of admissions at various health facilities, of which many patients are presenting with high resistance to the drugs prescribed for their conditions.
She claims that the Ministry’s technical teams are closely monitoring the situation in order to determine the source of apparent drug resistance among malaria patients.
Dr. Richard Kabanda, the Commissioner in charge of Health Promotion and Communications at the Ministry of Health, recently said that they preferred to conduct scientific studies on the possible mutation of malaria-causing parasites due to the persistent increase in the disease prevalence and resistance to drugs.
According to the WHO Malaria Global Index, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Tanzania, which are direct neighbors of Uganda, are clustered among the countries with the highest disease burden. They account for 12.6 and 3.9 percent, respectively, of all global malaria deaths.