In a lit­tle more good news today, Zam­bia is almost malaria free. The suc­cess is cred­ited to increased fund­ing and a lot of hard work. This year’s World Health Report says that malaria deaths have declined in Zam­bia by 66 percent.

From All Africa, writer Doreen Nawa Geth­se­mane Mwiz­abi gives us this analy­sis on the good news, as well as an exam­ple of a fam­ily who have opened up to mos­quito spraying.

This result along with other sup­port­ing data indi­cates that Zam­bia has reached the 2010 Roll Back Malaria tar­get of more than 50 per cent reduc­tion in malaria mor­tal­ity com­pared to 95 per cent in 2000.

Although, still too early to reg­is­ter the impact, Zam­bia joins the ranks of four African coun­tries among them Rwanda, Tan­za­nia and Sao Tome and Principe who have achieved major reduc­tions in malaria deaths through accel­er­ated malaria con­trol activities.

In sub-Saharan Africa, malaria has remained a major cause of death in chil­dren and preg­nant women.

The Abuja 2000 Dec­la­ra­tion on Roll Back Malaria declares the dis­ease accounts for about one mil­lion deaths in Africa and 50,000 in Zam­bia annually.

In Zam­bia it has had a neg­a­tive impact on eco­nomic growth as well as the attain­ment of the Mil­len­nium Devel­op­ment Goals (MDGs), there­fore reach­ing the tar­get is like a dream come true.
…

Mrs Chalwe Mofya who lives in Lulamba Town­ship, about nine kilo­me­tres away from Chin­gola town cen­tre says, she and her fam­ily of 12, had until now, been con­stant malaria patients.

Like many other fam­i­lies in the com­mu­nity, her fam­ily was a reg­u­lar at Lulamba Health Centre.

But the sit­u­a­tion has been dif­fer­ent since the 54-year-old widow opened her home to indoor spraying.

It has been four years since any mem­ber of her house­hold has suf­fered from malaria.

At first Mrs Mofya was against spray­ing because of the smell and incon­ve­nience that came with it but all that has changed.

“I hated this busi­ness of clean­ing the walls and shift­ing prop­erty in the house,” she said.

At national level, the com­mu­nity has been appre­cia­tive save for a few pock­ets of resis­tance attrib­ut­able to insuf­fi­cient or poor sensitisation.

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