Malaria remains our biggest challenge

MALARIA remains the single biggest development challenge to a developing country like Papua New Guinea.
Malaria is identified by World Health Organization as a disease that continues to threaten human health globally, in the year of 2016 alone, malaria caused 445,000 deaths and infected 332 million people.
Malaria is one of the most important public health problems in PNG with constant transmission in most of the coastal and island regions and unstable malaria with seasonal outbreaks in the highlands.
The PNG Government has recognised this and highlighted malaria as one of the key objective in the National Health Plan 2011-20 to reduce malaria-related illness and deaths.
Malaria affects over 90 per cent of PNG’s total population.
On average, a person suffers from three episodes of malaria in a year and that should be a concern.
This is evident by the current approximately 850,000 clinical malaria cases reported annually from our health facilities.
The good news though is that PNG’s involvement in scaling-up essential package of malaria prevention and control interventions from the past 10 years has seen the consistent reduction of malaria illness and deaths.
Interventions have helped health facilities throughout PNG in reducing Malaria in-patients by 61 per cent and malaria deaths by 69 per cent.
PNG did not meet the Sustainable Development Goals for Malaria, but is close to achieving an 85.5 per cent reduction in malaria prevalence from the general population between 2009 and 2014, and a 76.6 per cent reduction from incidences of outpatient malaria cases reported from the four sentinel sites.
It would cost a lot of money to eliminate malaria for the short term but would be an investment for a healthier population in the long term.
The government is very conscious of the fact that to achieve a malaria – free PNG must come with a cost in terms of having a sustainable control and surveillance system.
The Government of PNG will not achieve this on its own and hence needs its partners to make the fight against malaria a development priority is timely.
The Government of the People’s Republic of China last week donated 600,000 mosquito nets to support PNG in its fight to prevent malaria.
Malaria was once one of the most serious public health problems in China.
However, the disease burden has sharply declined and epidemic areas have shrunk after the implementation of an integrated malaria control and elimination strategy, especially since 2000.
China is targeting to achieve the goal of malaria elimination by 2020 and is willing to assist other countries like PNG eliminate malaria also.
For now, the most effective treatment is available in all health facilities in PNG.
The rapid diagnostic tests to diagnose malaria is also available in all health facilities to assist clinical staff confirm all suspected malaria cases and treat effectively.
Everybody suspects malaria
every time they have a fever or a headache.
The word “malaria” is quite common that almost every illness falls within the category of malaria but this should not be the case.
This is why, testing to confirm that you have malaria is very important so that you can be treated with the correct medicines that are readily available in all health centres throughout the country.
The year 2017 was the first year without any report of indigenous malaria cases throughout China.
With the partnership in place, China should be able to impart a
few tips to PNG on malaria elimination.