Southern Africa unveils cross-border campaign to fight malaria

Southern Africa, one of the world's malaria high-risk zones, is set to roll out a region-wide program to fight the contagious disease by strengthening cross-border collaboration, an official with the regional bloc said Thursday. The Racing Against Malaria campaign of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) will be launched from April 13 to 25, 11 years after a similar campaign was held last time in the region. The SADC covers 15 countries in southern Africa ranging from Tanzania to South Africa. Malawi President Joyce Banda will launch the campaign in Lilongwe on April 14. Coordinator of the SADC Roll Back Malaria program Kaka Mudambo told Xinhua in an interview in Harare that the purpose of the program was also to emphasize the need for active screening and parasite detection especially in the border areas, notification and rapid response through care-based surveillance. Mudambo said there was frequent and regular movement of malaria- infected populations across the SADC frontiers, from higher malaria transmission areas to low transmission zones and vice versa. This led to malaria outbreaks within the communities of low transmission countries - especially in remote communities - correlated with high malaria burden and associated mortality due to low immunity. Mudambo said some countries and districts in the region had managed to eliminate malaria, including Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland and some districts in Zimbabwe, while others faced daunting challenges. "We find that malaria prevalence is still very high and in some countries the rates are over 200 or 300 cases per 1,000 people," he said. "The countries require capacity strengthening and financial support as well as guidance to reduce the local transmission of malaria to zero." The International Organization for Migration health coordinator Tendai Gunda said the U.N. agency will support the campaign. He said cross-border populations tend to be missed when it comes to targeting strategies largely due to issues like poverty, weak health systems and anti-migrant and anti-refugee sentiments and lack of funding. "Some people could find it easy to seek treatment at nearby health facilities across the border but were not generally welcomed there," she said. "There is really need for cross-border collaboration when looking at communicable diseases such as malaria and cholera." Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals. It causes symptoms that typically include fever and headache, and in severe cases can lead to death. According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 3.4 billion people continued to be at risk of malaria in 2013, mostly in Africa and south-east Asia. Among them, 1.2 billion were at high risk, defined by more than one malaria case for every 1,000 people.