Eradicating malaria in subafrican countries - Essay Example

The boy William (2009) truly understood how the process of harnessing windmill energy can bring better life for his family and to his community. His constant efforts to build a small but effective device could bring the sustenance and better life. In the same way, an effective malaria eradication program can increase productive man hours and increase the output in industrial and agricultural produce. It is needed to understand the root cause of malaria in Africa first and then devise a full-fledged program, which overtime can eliminate this widespread disease.

The severity of malaria in Subafrican region is due to climate and ecology. It is correct to state that malaria affected regions are mostly poor and bound by low economic growth. There are indeed some of the success stories of malaria eradication in the world in the countries such as Italy, Greece, and Spain between 1930 and 1950. Greece had a major suffering in the beginning of 1900s with the spread of malaria. WHO run Malaria eradication campaign had a major effect in Greece in 1946. Infected cases reduced to only 5000 in 1951 from 1-2 million cases per year found in the early 1930s.

Unfortunately, it is hard to find much success stories in developing countries sparing the islands of Taiwan and Jamaica. Malaria was eradicated from Jamaica and Taiwan in the year 1958 and 1961 respectively and since then they were in higher growth trajectories. (Gallup & Sachs, 1998) William’s story inspires us about the innovativeness of a small boy that can transform his small town amid adversity. Malawi is a town falling under sub-African region where diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria are quite wide spread.

It will be appropriate to see what the measures are taken to eliminate the disease in Malawi. Malawi's the entire population of 1.39 million is at risk of contracting the disease. Every year, almost 4 million cases are registered in health care facilities annually. Malaria is said to have almost accounted for 40% of inpatient visits. Almost 18% deaths in hospital are accounted to this dreaded disease. Malawi is the first country who relinquished the use of chloroquine in favor of more effective drug.

There are many challenges to the issue such as lack of human resources, parasite resistance to the first-line treatment, poverty and a lack of proper monitoring system. To mitigate the weak monitoring system, the World Bank spearheaded a project called Health Sector Support Project through additional funding. The project was also supported by other agencies such as U.S President's Malaria Initiative (PMI) –proposing approximately $186 million in malaria control. Malawi has stopped proposing chloroquine due to resistance developed by malarial parasites and instead implemented a change known as artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTS).

World Bank's investment in evaluation and monitoring system will help assess the effect of change in treatment system. Through this system of monitoring, it will be possible to have improved result-based decision making. The additional grant with further strengthen the efforts to eradicate the malaria from Malawi. Finally, it will have multiple goals to fulfill reducing child mortality, reducing poverty and protecting the poorest from the