Program cuts Vietnam village malaria deaths to Zero
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Malaria continues to be a deadly scourge in much of the developing world, killing more than 2 million people each year. But the dramatic success of a pilot program conducted in a small Vietnamese village suggests the disease can be conquered.
According to experts at the United Nation's World Health Organization ( news - web sites), after just four years into the program, the 1,028 residents of Phan Tien saw their annual rate of malaria deaths plummet from 30 in 1994 to zero in 1998.
A combination of improved access to health workers and anti-malarial drugs, as well as residents' use of insecticide-laden bed nets, "brought malaria under control remarkably quickly," according to researchers led by Le Q. Hung. They published their findings in the August issue of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.
Malaria is caused by a parasite transmitted by the bite of an infected female mosquito. It leads to fever, muscle stiffness, shaking and sweating and can be fatal if left untreated.
Phan Tien, located in malaria-endemic southern Vietnam, has a long history of battling the disease. However, beginning in 1994, researchers set up what they called a village "health post"--two trained health care workers armed with the anti-malarial drug artesunate--to help spot and control the disease. They also recruited 10 community members as "health co-workers" to distribute insecticide-impregnated bed nets to villagers, and to educate them on how best to protect themselves and their families against malaria.
Those efforts paid off. Within just four years, deaths linked to malaria were eliminated in the village, even though its population had grown by nearly 50% over the same period of time. Similar gains were charted across Vietnam, which is implementing these strategies on a national scale.
But the WHO cautions that the fight against malaria cannot waver. They note that in the fifth year of the Phan Tien experiment annual deaths due to malaria rose again to 18, due in part to the feeling among villagers that malaria "was not a problem any more."
According to Dr. Kamini Mendis of WHO's global Roll Back Malaria campaign, "The whole challenge of malaria control can be seen in this one example. The means exist and they can be very effective, but only if they are fully used and on a continuous basis."
