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Drop in gold price lending to reduced malaria cases
– Vector Control Director
Although the unprecedented drop in the price of gold recorded globally last year could have a potential daunting impact on the local economy, there is however an upside to the existing state of affairs.
According to Dr Reyaud Rahman, who has responsibility for the Vector Control Services Unit of the Ministry of Health, because of a noticeable decline in the number of individuals working at mining sites in the interior locations, efforts to tackle malaria are likely to become more manageable.
Vector Control workers are tasked with accessing dredges like this to test miners for malaria as they work.
And managing malaria has, and continues to be, a major task for the Health Ministry, as according to Dr Rahman, malaria is one of the more challenging vector-borne diseases. The disease is one that is transmitted by the female Anopheles mosquito and is endemic in Regions of One, Seven, Eight and Nine, sections of which mining activities are prevalent.
In order to tackle malaria, Vector Control Field Officers are tasked with venturing into the sometimes impassable terrain of the interior locations in order to reach miners, loggers, among others vulnerable to the disease, in order to test them for malaria, provide them with treatment and Long Lasting Insecticidal Nets that can ward off the disease-carrying vector and by extension contain its spread. A reduction of the disease could also be aided by the use of mosquito repellent.
“There is no vaccine; there is no drug that can keep away malaria…so we are hoping that persons can adhere to practices to safeguard themselves,” said Dr Rahman.
The mining areas are often sprawling terrains with sections sparely populated, thus resulting in the Vector Control Workers travelling for miles to reach mining camps that are constantly inhabited with new entrants to the mining sector.
“Because persons are not getting as much money for their gold, they are disenchanted, and so they stay out of the interior and may return later, because this of course is their way of life; this is their profession…We know that as soon as the price heads back up we are going have a huge amount of people going back, so we are using this as an opportunity to get the cases down as low as possible.”
No effort is spared, even travelling through rugged terrain to get the job done.
As such, any decrease in activities in the mining areas will translate to fewer people for the Vector Control workers to reach, which according to Dr Rahman, will undoubtedly result in the stabilising of malaria. According to him, every effort will be made to take advantage of the dropped gold price which has resulted in the reduced mining activities, to fast-track efforts at battling the disease.
“The main thing is that we can get the cases down by ensuring that the persons who are infected are treated as soon as possible. The faster we treat them, means that we can prevent it from affecting more persons….Every time we decrease cases it works in our favour,” asserted Dr Rahman.
Over the past year approximately 150,000 individuals from the mining communities were tested for malaria. And according to the Vector Control Director, because of intensified efforts to tackle the disease over the past few years, the cases of malaria have been slashed by at least half. A few years ago the number of malaria cases was in excess of 30,000.
Dr Rahman is optimistic that the ongoing efforts will see the cases being lowered to as little as 10,000 next year and according to him, “that is going to be a significant help to us as we work towards bringing malaria down to less than 1,000 cases in the next five years.”
And even as efforts are being made to control the prevalence of malaria, Dr Rahman said that the Ministry is looking to put in place new measures this year to sustain its gains.
Without shedding too much light on the proposed measures, the Vector Control Director noted that these have already been implemented in some first world countries.
“I can’t make it public yet, but these are bold interventions that will significantly help malaria especially, and will further help to bring down the number of cases we see,” Dr Rahman stated.
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