‘When your fear touches someone’s pain, it becomes pity. When your love touches someone’s pain, it becomes compassion.’

- Stephen Levine

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The KMO Project

VPWA has instituted an annual month long volunteer driven awareness campaign, entitled Kick Malaria Out (KMO), designed to create much-needed awareness on

(1) the rate at which Malaria is killing the West African population, especially children and pregnant women and

(2) measures to prevent and eradicate, if not minimize, the Malaria disease within the community with a special emphasis on educating the population on the need to avoid creating breeding grounds for mosquitoes and advocating for aerial spraying in Africa using efficient technology adopted by Palm Beach County in Florida-USA.

The maiden KMO campaign will run from October 20, 2009 thru November 18, 2009 with an outreach by combined volunteers arriving from allover the world to 5 regions of Ghana between October 21st to November 2, 2009. KMO has implementing partners in Togo, Benin, Nigeria,Ivory Coast, & Liberia and each implementing partner will take initiatives on KMO dates to spread the awareness.

Campaign KMO is open for participation by all section of individuals including medical professionals, students, educators, PR/Communication experts and various professions.  Volunteers will be divided into groups . A Volunteer Team Leader will be assigned for each group of volunteers.

During the first two weeks of KMO 2009(21st October 2009- 2nd November 2009), Volunteers will travel to five regions of Ghana disseminating information about Malaria and distributing educational materials. Volunteers will also use the media including the TV, Radio and print to promote the awareness.

Each group will:

 

·       Conduct community workshops on Malaria by disseminating people-friendly statistical information on the spread of Malaria and providing preventative measures to prevent being infected by the disease

·       Conduct clean-up training exercises designed to show communities how to prevent and clear water stagnation which is the breeding source of mosquitoes and caused by a) uneven floor b) clogged drains c) poor gradient of gutters and drains. e) rain accumulation f)overflows g)leakages from pipes h)roof gutters chocked with leaves or silt i)misalignment of rainwater downpipes with elbow joint, resulting in blockages. j) Collected water in discarded receptacles.

 

• Each year approximate 515 million cases of malaria occur worldwide, and over one million people die, most of them young children in sub-Saharan Africa.

• In sub Saharan Africa with high malaria transmission, an estimated 1 million people die of malaria – over 2700 deaths per day, or 2 deaths per minute.

• Malaria is the highest cause of death in children in sub-Saharan Africa, after perinatal conditions (conditions occurring around the time of birth), lower respiratory infections (pneumonias), and diarrheal diseases.
  

• Malaria forms a huge part of widespread poverty in Africa. It causes a loss of almost 2% of economic growth, A 20% reduction in GNP after 15years and short term benefits control of up to $12billion each year. Very staggering indeed! If we can fight Mosquitoes (the cause of Malaria) Africa’s development will be accelerated because family incomes will rise.

•  "Malaria is hurting the living standards of Africans today and is also preventing the improvement of living standards for future generations," said Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, Director General of the World Health Organization. "This is an unnecessary and preventable handicap on the continent's economic development." According to statistical estimates in 2000 , sub-Saharan Africa's GDP would have been up to 32% greater that year if malaria had been eliminated 35 years ago. This would represent over $100 billion added to sub-Saharan Africa's current GDP of $300 billion. This extra $100 billion would be, by comparison,nearly five times greater than all development aid provided to Africa the year before. (Note: Nothing has change about this statistics till now.We are in 2009)

Measures for Effective Control Efforts

Unless breeding sites (most of which are man-made and temporary) are taken care of, it is impossible to control mosquito breeding and hence mosquito-borne diseases. And it is impossible to achieve this without the participation of the general public. Education of the people is thus very important for any meaningful action. The following measures are called for to minimize mosquito breeding and these measures require only a trifle of human efforts:

• Do not throw utensils, vessels, buckets, tyres, bottles, tender coconut shells etc. in the open. They should be either destroyed or buried or at least kept inverted so that water cannot collect in them. All such things should be cleared during the rainy season.
• All tanks should be kept tightly closed. A black plastic sheet can be used for the purpose. Also, all tanks should be emptied, cleaned and allowed to dry for at least half an hour, once every week.
• Terraces and roofs should ideally have a slope, particularly in places where monsoon tends to be heavy. All such roofs/terraces should have adequate drainage for water. Any collection of water on these surfaces should be cleared at least once a week.
• At construction sites, all the care should be taken to avoid collection of water at one place for more than a week. The layer of water on the surface of the concrete, used for concrete curing, should be cleared at least once a week and allowed to dry for half an hour. All other puddles should be cleared regularly. Collections of water in the toilets and closets under construction should also be cleared. All tanks should be kept snugly closed.
• All unused wells and tanks should be closed or destroyed. Engine oil or kerosene has been used as a larvicidal on these collections. Another method to prevent egg laying on unused wells is by adding EPS polystyrene beads onto the surface of water. These beads are non-toxic, cheap and long lasting. They coat the water surface and prevent the mosquito from laying eggs.
• Wells that are being used and ornamental tanks can be treated with biological larvicides that do not harm the quality of drinking water. Also, these wells should be covered with either mosquito-proof nets or with plastic sheets.
  

What is Malaria?

Malaria has been known to mankind since millennia and probably human malaria evolved with the mankind. Today malaria affects more than 2400 million people, over 40% of the world's population, in more than 100 countries in the tropics. Every year 300 million to 500 million people suffer from this disease and about 1.5 million to 3 million people die of malaria every year (85% of these occur in Africa), accounting for about 4-5% of all fatalities in the world. Malaria ranks third among the major infectious diseases in causing deaths. Malaria is caused by the parasite called Plasmodia. There are four identified species of this parasite causing human malaria, namely, Plasmodium vivax, P. falciparum, P. ovale and P. malariae. Plasmodium falciparum is more common in sub Saharan Africa and Melanesia (Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands); Plasmodium vivax in Central and South America, India, N. Africa and Middle East; Plasmodium ovale in Western Africa and Plasmodium malariae is sporadic worldwide.

Transmission

Malaria is transmitted by the female anopheles mosquito

Symptoms

The symptoms appear after 7-15 days of an infected bite. Typical malarial illness is characterized by shaking chills, followed by high grade fever and sweating (Cold stage, Hot stage and Sweating stage), usually occurring during mid-day. This recurs in 48-72 hour cycles. But many patients may have atypical illness characterised by atypical fever, head ache and body ache, weakness, prostration, easy fatiguability, Vomiting, diarrhoea, cough etc. With complicated malaria, patients can develop breathlessness, chest pain, abdominal pain, altered behaviour, altered sensorium, convulsions, coma etc.

Diagnosis

Diagnosis of malaria is confirmed by examination of the blood for malarial parasite, either by a peripheral smear examination or the new QBC fluorescent technique. Now, non-microscopic rapid tests are also available.

Treatment

Chloroquine is the most widely used drug for treating P. vivax malaria. With wide spread resistance to chloroquine in P. falciparum malaria, combinations of drugs like artimisinin derivatives, sulfadoxine/pyrimethamine, doxycycline, lumefantrine, atovaquone and proguanil etc., are being used for the treatment of P. falciparum infection.

Prevention

Malaria vaccine has not yet become a reality and therefore, prevention of individual is essentially protection from the vector mosquitoes.