Malaria Killing More People in West Africa than Ebola
Ebola is wreaking havoc in West Africa and even though the outbreak has taken a toll on thousands of people, malaria is believed to be killing more people in West Africa than Ebola.
Malaria is transmitted when a person is bit by an infected female Anopheles mosquito. Nets for Life Africa, an American charitable organization, reveals that more than 207 million people around the world are infected with malaria each year and over half a million people die of the infection. However, 90 percent of the total malaria-related deaths occur in Africa.
The latest Ebola outbreak, which started earlier this year, has resulted in the deaths of over 7,500 people mainly in the western African countries of Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. The attention of healthcare workers in these countries has been diverted to Ebola. Doctors in some parts of Guinea reveal that they have stopped taking blood samples of people believed to have malaria infection.
Guinea has also reported a drop in malaria cases by 40 percent this year. Health experts suggest that even though malaria cases have dropped in the country it is not good news.
Dr. Bernard Nahlen, the deputy director of the U.S. President's Malaria Initiative, suggests that the decrease in malaria cases is mainly because people are scared to go to health clinics to get malaria treatment.
"It would be a major failure on the part of everybody involved to have a lot of people die from malaria in the midst of the Ebola epidemic," says Dr. Nahlen. "I would be surprised if there were not an increase in unnecessary malaria deaths in the midst of all this, and a lot of those will be young children."
In 2013, about 15,000 people in Guinea died due to malaria and 14,000 of these deaths were of children under the age of five years. The latest Ebola outbreak has resulted in the deaths of more than 1,600 people in Guinea.
About 12 million people in Guinea do not have access to health facilities and many infections, as well as deaths due to malaria can easily go unaccounted.
Healthcare agencies and professionals are busy dealing with the Ebola crisis. Malaria is also a consistent disease in the current Ebola-hit regions and healthcare agencies should not forget the disease, which kills thousands of people each year.
Africa's most population dense areas are in the malarial zone, so malarial and tropical illness have traditionally been the primary health concern for Africans by number since the beginning of mankind.
African in this area have particular genetic, dietary and cultural adaptations to deal with tropical illness but it's always going to be an issue the way cold is an issue in the arctic circle.
For example, when Africans formed large urban societies, they typically died out after around 4 generations because living in close proximity made malaria a pandemic and would kill of too many people until the urban societies would decay or spread back out. Most African cultures in this zone thus formed small societies and once they became too big families would branch out and start their own communities.
Genetic adaptations include sickle cell enema and high blood pressure, both give their carriers a strong resistance to malaria.
Eating a lot of spices also increases resistance and food from successful african societies in this zone include consistently spicy diets.
The entirety of African society in this zone is adapted to combat malaria. Reaching a point of mastery over the illness allowed for the 'Bantu Migrations' which was a mass latitudinal migration to the southern part of Africa.
This is significant because prior to 'modern medicine' a latitudinal migration would be nearly impossible because you would pass through too many climate zones for natural adaptations to cope with, but living in the 'worst of the worst' as far as malarial zones allowed the bantus use their cultural, social, and genetic adaptations to travel the entire continent.
When europeans came thousands of years later it was impossible for them to do the same. They maintained their european oriented understanding of socialization by forming urban societies, living in close proximity, maintaining their traditional diet, and then trying to make the same latitudial journey from south africa (where climate is in the same biological zone as southern europe) to central africa (where they would die).
This is why there's white ppl in the tip of southern africa but no where else (though they tried) other than high altitude dots throughout the continent like Jos and Enugu in Nigeria, and parts of Kenya.
The issue now is large urban conglomerations is the 'norm' globally, and a lot of the malaria resistant cultural traits of the older african cultures have been lost so malaria is a major issue again.
in context malaria is the most important climate issue in africa by far, and saying more africans have malaria than ebola is like saying more russians are cold than have ebola.
"Die before you die."-Prophet Muhammad (Pbuh)
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