MSF Press Release
Johannesburg/London- 30th September 2008 – During the UN General Assembly last week, government leaders, philanthropists, international organizations and corporations announced a combined $3 billion in contributions to implement the Global Malaria Action Plan, aimed at eradicating malaria worldwide by 2015. British PM Gordon Brown pledged $ 83 million from the British government towards malaria eradication efforts.
A new report published today by the international medical organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) says that shipping tests and drugs to a country is not enough - measures to effectively ensure their delivery to patients must be put into effect immediately. Patients will continue to die needlessly if available efficient treatment and diagnostic tools do not reach them and MSF urges for a wider implementation of new and effective diagnosis and treatment strategies. The report titled “Full Prescription; better malaria treatment for more people, MSF’s experience” outlines the organisation’s work in Sierra Leone, Chad and Mali, and proves that deaths can be avoided with simple, affordable treatment and diagnostic tools.
“Increased funding is available for malaria, but it’s still insufficient” says Meinie Nicolai, General Director of MSF in Brussels. “Newer and more effective drugs have started to arrive on the shelves and rapid tests exist that can confirm the diagnosis in fifteen minutes. But many efforts are failing at the last hurdle and scores of sick people, mainly children, still do not get the treatment they need.”
In large parts of sub-Saharan Africa, people do not have access to healthcare because health centres are too expensive and too far away. In Sierra Leone only 12% of children thought to be suffering from malaria received efficient treatment from the national health service(*). MSF’s experience and research show that many patients living in poor countries do not seek health care because they are put off by the high costs.
Geographical barriers are also a huge deterrent for people seeking malaria treatment. Some rural communities are very far from health centres or isolated by flooding during the rainy season. Highly effective strategies have been implemented using malaria village workers to treat malaria patients in the villages where they live. By combining free care at health centre level and in the villages isolated from health centres, MSF’s project in Mali has succeeded in tripling the number of malaria cases detected and treated over a year.
User-friendly rapid tests have been effective in allowing trained volunteers to recognise whether a patient is suffering from fever caused by malaria without jeopardising the quality of care. When cases are identified, the malaria village worker dispenses drugs to the patient or the caretaker free of charge.
“Malaria village workers are not the silver bullet,” explains Christine Jamet, Head of Mission for MSF in Chad. “But they allow to efficiently bridge the gap where health structures are not accessible. They should not exempt the authorities from extending access to care, especially as people who test negative for malaria must be treated for whatever causes their fever and complex cases need to be referred to a health structure. To ensure appropriate medical treatment, malaria cases should be systematically confirmed by using a test.”
At the moment, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends that all children with fever, in highly endemic regions, should be treated with anti-malarial drugs. But in countries such as Sierra Leone, a high-transmission area, systematic use of rapid tests in MSF’s Bo project showed that 30 to 40 % of the suspected cases under five are actually negative. WHO have recommended not using the tests but this means that many children will receive treatment for the wrong disease. If malaria treatment is administered without tests, no further examination will be performed to check what actually causes the fever and many potentially deadly diseases will go undetected.
(*) Survey Report: Coverage of malaria control interventions in the eight Global Fund districts in Sierra Leone. Ministry of Health and Sanitation, Sierra Leone, March 2007
For more information or to arrange an interview with Dr Prudence Hamade, Head of MSF Malaria Working Group, please contact Olivia Blanchard on 07770 235 740 or 0207 0670 4217