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Students must be Guyana’s ‘Malaria Ambassadors’, says VCS Director
In the opinion of Dr. Horace Cox, Guyana needs a cadre of ‘Malaria Ambassadors’ to herald the expanding national fight to beat the dreaded mosquito-borne disease which has struck 31, 968 persons between 2014 and 2019, some with deadly effect.
Director of the Vector Control Services, Dr. Horace Cox (at centre with laptop) with other officials at the ‘Malaria Day in the Americas’ event in Port Kaituma
The venture was a big hit among the students of Port Kaituma Primary School
But Cox, Director of the Vector Control Services (VCS) within the Public Health Ministry, has his eyes riveted on a sub-set of informal representatives – the nation’s school population. And in his keynote address at Port Kaituma to mark ‘Malaria Day in the Americas’ he unveiled his vision of enlisting students as spokespersons and exemplars in the national malaria fight which he said rests on four planks: preventing mosquito bites; managing the environment to reduce breeding sites; ensuring access to safe and quality anti-malarials in alignment with the national treatment guidelines; and, rolling out focused public health measures to prevent the establishment of “mutations in the malaria parasite”.
About the constant alteration of the parasite, Dr. Cox noted that it “complicates management of the deadly disease, and if this were to be, it increases the risk of patients not responding to treatment”.
Not responding can and does have lethal consequences: globally and in the Americas, which includes Guyana. This South American Republic has been fortunate, since from the 22,056 confirmed malaria cases, only 0.1 percent of the patients died from the disease between 2016 and so far for 2019.
Mr. Enoch Benjamin, Assistant Regional Executive Officer (AREO) of Barima/Waini, (Region One) said continued mass sensitisation is a key strategy to help beat malaria in that interior mining community.
Malaria is also endemic in Cuyuni/Mazaruni (Region Seven); Potaro/Siparuni (Region Eight) and Upper Takutu/Upper Essequibo (Region Nine) and VCS staff have been utilising the national strategic plan which the PAHO/WHO official, Dr. Fabu Moses asserted “can (help) make a stark change in the behaviour among residents” with capacity-building support.
This year’s ‘Malaria Day in the Americas’ was a quadri-partite effort among the Guyana government, PAHO/WHO, Breakthrough Action (Guyana) and the Barima/Waini Regional Democratic Council (RDC) under the theme ‘Ready to beat Malaria’ with the sub-theme ‘Zero malaria starts with me’ a big hit among Port Kaituma Primary School students.
This year’s theme underlines the universal commitment to push for a malaria-free planet in the face of “worrying trends” highlighted in the 2017 World Malaria Report. In it, progress has stalled following an unprecedented period of controlling the disease.
The Report also pointed out that the current pace is insufficient to achieve the 2020 milestones of the WHO Global Technical Strategy for Malaria 2016–2030, which calls for a 40 percent reduction in malaria case incidence and death rates.
The two-year-old global malaria report also noted that countries with ongoing transmission are increasingly falling into one of two categories: those moving towards elimination and those with a high burden of the disease that have reported significant increases in malaria cases.
Picking up on this theme, the 2018 World Malaria Report stated: “Without urgent action, the major gains in the fight against malaria are under threat…(and) WHO continues to call for greater investment and expanded coverage of proven tools that prevent, diagnose and treat malaria.”
The global technical strategy to beat the infectious disease rests on three pillars, viz, ensuring universal access to malaria prevention, diagnosis and treatment; accelerating efforts towards elimination and attainment of malaria-free status and transforming malaria surveillance into a core intervention.
Guyana’s programme mirrors the global plan and focuses on mass net distribution; training among miners to undertake smears; larviciding and training Community Health Workers (CHWs) to conduct rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) explained Regional Health Officer (RHO) Dr. Lachmie Lall.
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