THE ROLE OF WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION (WHO) IN COMBATING MALARIA IN AFRICA: ITS IMPACT AND PROSPECTS

THE ROLE OF WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION (WHO) IN COMBATING MALARIA IN AFRICA: ITS IMPACT AND PROSPECTS

ABSTRACT

This study has revealed the grim irony that dazzling advances in biomedical science are scarcely felt in areas where need is greatest. Large numbers of people are dying of malaria, a preventable and curable disease, for lack of even the simplest measures of modern medicine. While gains in biomedical technology are important, so are developments in the methodology for analyzing complex problems, planning optimum use of resources and managing programmes. The study has drawn the distinguishing line between the problems of providing health care, when there is a reasonable balance between numbers of people and resources available and the problems of reaching all the people of the entire world, a region, a nation or even a community. The decision to serve an entire population profoundly influences every step of planning and resource allocation. For health services to be effective it must reach across the land into communities and homes and include those who do not seek health care (but may desperately need it) as well as those who do. Every apparent medical success must be measured against the needs of all. Every effort, every cluster of resources must be divided by the total number of people. vi Two major developments have brought us into confrontation with the need to serve all the people. First is the rising sense of social responsibility that each nation feels for the well being of its people. Second is an increasing capability for dealing with the problems of health care. Closely related to these trends is a sense of urgency based on such factors as finding a solution to the problem of rapid population growth and that the disadvantaged sectors of society can react in ways that are often disruptive and may be exceedingly dangerous. The reality of the situation is that our increasing abilities to quantify the needs of people and evaluate the uses of resources are making it painfully clear that lives are lost and damaged in some places while life-saving resources are wasted on trivia in others. In individual nations, there is increasing impatience and even outrage over the failure to reach the disadvantaged, but it remains to be seen how soon these feelings will lead nations to share their resources across international boundaries. In considering how to reach all the people with health care, it must be realized that although the medical answers to some diseases, such as malaria, are well known (getting rid of mosquitoes), the cost of providing these answers would consume all available health vii resources in many countries. This realization may have influenced WHO’S decision to champion the launching of Roll Back Malaria (RBM) in 1998 – a partnership working world-wide to halve the burden of malaria by 2010. As firmly established by this study, however, three years after its inception the RBM programme have failed to make a statistically significant impact particularly in Africa where malaria continues to ravage the continent leaving behind in its trail scores of infant and maternal deaths and retarded social and economic growth. The solution recommended by this study Is simply a diligent application, on a large scale, of a well organised and supported malaria control programme based on the present day technologies, which the study assert have newer really been applied and sustained on a big enough scale to make much difference in malaria incidence, morbidity and mortality. In the end the study endorses the on going researches for new malaria control technology, including malaria vaccine as a step in the right direction but point to the fact that even in a most optimistic scenario, such a product will not be available for widespread use within the next five years.

THE ROLE OF WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION (WHO) IN COMBATING MALARIA IN AFRICA: ITS IMPACT AND PROSPECTS