What is the issue?
- India has a high incidence of malaria and it is committed to eliminate malaria by 2030.
- Public private partnership is required to achieve the malaria elimination target.
What is malaria?
- A disease caused by a plasmodium parasite, transmitted by the bite of infected mosquitoes (usually female anopheles mosquitos).
- The severity of malaria varies based on the species of plasmodium.
- Symptoms of the disease includes chills, fever and sweating, usually occurring a few weeks after being bitten.
- It is preventable through a Malaria vaccine and it is curable disease.
What is the status of Malaria in India?
- Malaria exists in all States in India, and 95 per cent of Indians are at risk.
- Most cases are reported from Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha.
- North-Eastern states like Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Tripura also have high transmission.
- However, the scale and distribution of this devastating disease is not well documented.
- Estimates range from 1 million to 18 million cases and from 400 to 48,000 deaths per year.
What are the challenges in eliminating the disease?
- Majority of malaria in India is diagnosed and treated (or commonly misdiagnosed and mistreated) in the private sector.
- Private Doctors and clinics have no obligation to follow government guidelines, use recommended drugs, or report malaria cases to State authorities.
- In 2015, 86 million malaria treatments were procured in the private sector, compared to just 2 million in the public sector.
- Each year, the private sector procures nearly 10 million injections of Artemisinin Monotherapy, a treatment that is strongly discouraged in India and elsewhere because it accelerates the development of deadly drug resistance.
- The misuse of malaria drugs in India is an irony, given that India is by far the largest supplier of high-quality approved malaria drugs to the rest of the world.
What measures needs to be taken?
- In 2017 India launched national strategic plan for malaria elimination, awareness about the plan needs to be created through campaigns.
- National initiatives must promote innovative strategies, incentivise the appropriate use of diagnostics, drugs and insecticides, and ensure that all malaria cases are reported.
- The most affected States must aggressively bring their malaria down using effective vector-control and case management practices, combined with robust surveillance systems.
- States will have to tailor their programmes to achieve elimination, especially in tribal areas where the burden of malaria is often the highest.
- A single approach to malaria elimination will not work in any large country, especially in India where the biology, entomology and epidemiology of the disease vary considerably.
- Thus partnership between communities, civil society, private sector, and public health agencies is required.
Source: Business Line
