Nation gets on board global campaign to defeat malaria

16:33' 28/04/2008 (GMT+7)
VietNamNet Bridge – A campaign to prevent and treat malaria were launched throughout Vietnam on Friday.

The campaign was part of the World Health Organisation's first global day - Friday, April 25, - to publicise the dangers of mosquito-borne scourge.

The day's theme was "Malaria - a disease without borders" and its purpose was to provide "education and understanding of malaria."

In Vietnam, the focus is the dissemination of information about malaria and enhanced monitoring in the high-risk Central Highlands, central provinces, the southeast and some northern highland provinces.

Mosquito nets will be provided free to 11mil people in mosquito-prone regions and repellent sprayed. Central Quang Tri Province's Preventive Medicine Centre reports that not many inhabitants use mosquito nets although more than two have been distributed free to each household.

Only about 30% of inhabitants sleep under mosquito nets in some communes.

Nets for drugs

Some people even swap their free mosquito nets for drugs," said northern highland Lai Chau Province Health Department director Do Cong Huan.

The director said resistance to anti-malaria drugs was on the rise throughout country and the public healthcare network covered only 80% of remote Vietnam.

More than 32% of Vietnamese, or 20mil people, live with the disease.

The director warned of a potential malaria epidemic with the arrival of the wet season. Vietnam will spend VND145bil - more than US$9.06mil - to prevent and treat, malaria this year, says National Entomology Institute director Nguyen Manh Hung.

The money will be used to reduce the mortality and infection rate by at least 5% against last year.

This means deaths from malaria are expected to fall below 0.02 per 100,000 people and infection below 0.8 per 100,000 people.

Almost 72,000 Vietnamese were infected with malaria last year and 20 died.

The number of fatalities was almost 90% less than in 2000.