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Every day, 3,000 children under the age of five die from malaria; that’s one child every 30 seconds. In Africa, malaria causes about 20 per cent of all child deaths. Yet the transmission of the disease can be drastically reduced by something as simple as sleeping under an anti-malarial bed net.
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The Problem
In Africa, malaria is the largest single cause of death among African children under five years of age. One child dies of malaria every 30 seconds for a total of 3,000 children a day. Many more children are left with persistent anaemia, lifelong brain damage or paralysis.
If a woman contracts malaria during pregnancy, it can lead to severe anaemia, miscarriage, stillbirth or a child of low birth weight, one of the leading risk factors for infant mortality. Malaria is estimated to cause up to 15 per cent of maternal anaemia cases. More than 500 million people contract malaria each year and one million die of the disease.
How it spreads
Malaria is a parasitic disease caused by a one-cell parasite called Plasmodium. The parasite is transmitted when a night-biting female Anopheles mosquito bites an infected person. The parasite develops in the mosquito and is passed on to another person by the mosquito. Once the parasite has entered the bloodstream of a person, it matures and multiplies. In just a few hours, the parasites can destroy thousands of red blood cells, leading to severe anaemia and sometimes death.
Action to save children
UNICEF is the largest purchaser of insecticide-treated bed nets in the world and provides them for free to governments in malaria-endemic countries.
Preventing malaria
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| A mother and child with their new insecticide-treated mosquito nets during a UNICEF anti-malaria distribution campaign in Matare, Ethiopia |
Ensuring children sleep under insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs) is the most effective way to prevent malaria. These bed nets have been shown to reduce malaria transmission by up to 50 per cent. As many as 500,000 children could be saved every year if all children under the age of five in Africa slept under treated bed nets. Not only do ITNs provide a physical barrier to prevent mosquitoes from biting children, they can actually kill mosquitoes and other insects. In a Kenyan study, women who slept under ITNs at night gave birth to 25 per cent fewer premature or low birth weight babies than women who did not use ITNs.
UNICEF is the largest purchaser of ITNs in the world and provides them for free to governments in malaria-endemic countries.
The bed nets are distributed through antenatal care clinics to pregnant women and through routine health visits to families with children. In some countries, periodical large public health campaigns combine immunization, distribution of ITNs and other health interventions for families.
In Ghana, during the first week of November, 2.1 million ITNs are being distributed free of charge to young children. UNICEF is the lead partner in this initiative with the Ministry of Health.
In Ethiopia, a massive scale-up will ensure the delivery, free of charge to pregnant women, young children and poor families, of more than 18 million nets provided by UNICEF. This will result in 90 per cent ITN coverage in Ethiopia. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) is helping to fund this significant programme scale-up.
Treatment of malaria
If a child does contract the disease, prompt, effective treatment for malaria is critical; for a child, delaying treatment by just a few hours can lead to death.
Chloroquine, the least expensive and previously most widely used antimalarial drug has lost its effectiveness in almost all countries in Eastern and Southern Africa as the disease becomes resistant to traditional treatment. Newer Artemisinin-based combination therapies are offering new hope in the fight against malaria.