I was young when I first heard about malaria. My grandfather, who grew up in Algeria, told how as a boy he had once become so ill that he sometimes still had nightmares about the fever dreams of that time. His story made a big impression. And now I myself live on a continent where malaria, an infectious disease caused by parasites through a mosquito bite, is common.
The great advantage of Nairobi, my location, is that the city is so high that the malaria mosquito is hardly present there. My GP urged me to avoid all risk areas during my pregnancy. Result: I spend a lot of time at home – very frustrating for this correspondent.
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In 2019, 409,000 people worldwide died from malaria, the majority of the victims being children under the age of five. That figure has been more or less the same for a number of years, as can be read in the World Malaria Report of the World Health Organisation. In Africa, the number of infections is increasing.
The same report warns about the consequences of the coronavirus on the fight against malaria. Because while the virus spread worldwide, the attention for the mosquito disease faded into the background.
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Health facilities could not do their job properly, and people were initially advised to stay at home if they had complaints such as fever. Something you right not should do with malaria: then it is very important that you get medicine as soon as possible. It is not yet known what effect this has had on the number of malaria infections and deaths.
Yet a glimmer of hope glimmers among the rubble of the corona pandemic. A first study shows that a new malaria vaccine is particularly successful in 450 children who received the vaccine in Burkina Faso. After a year, a high dose appears to be 77 percent effective. An unparalleled result.
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Coincidentally, that same country also conducts research into another form of malaria control: the use of genetic modification. A team of Dutch journalists did two years ago extensive report on scientists who change the DNA of the malaria mosquito in such a way that new mosquitoes can only have sons. The females, the mosquitoes that sting and spread the disease, are slowly dying out.
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And then there are countless other inventions that pop up regularly, from mosquito swarms tracking with drones until special fans that spread insecticide.
It gives hope, but you may wonder what it takes to get rid of the disease for good. Certainly in times of corona, it now appears how quickly medical science can work in the event of a major emergency. What if malaria had been a European or North American problem? The disease may well have been eradicated by then.
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