Step up efforts to fight malaria in children

It is a bitter irony of history that the first thing to go global, in a “viral” way, was not something benevolent and useful to humans, like the idea of democracy or electricity, but rather devastating diseases. Tiny agents such as bacteria and viruses travelled on their human or animal host from continent to continent at the first opportunity that they had. The consequences were disastrous.  

One example is smallpox. The disease was previously unknown in the West, and only existed in the Eastern hemisphere. Notoriously, once Christopher Columbus landed in the Caribbean for the second time in 1493, the previously healthy inhabitants started to die en masse from this viral infection. Humans living in the East had developed some natural resistance against smallpox over the centuries, but natives of the Caribbean islands were completely unprotected. Even now, it is hard to comprehend the scale of the devastation – it is estimated that the islands’ population declined from more than one million to a mere 10,000 in a matter of years. 

But fortunately, human ingenuity and progress is also a global phenomenon. After Louis Pasteur proved vaccinations can work in 1881, a long and enduring battle between medicine and pathogen took off. So far, medicine has won some impressive battles, with many horrific diseases retreating and even disappearing. Let us not forget that smallpox has been declared eradicated globally since 1980 – after having killed an estimated 500 million people in the final last 100 years of its existence! But there are also new pathogens, like Ebola, wreaking havoc in families, especially in Africa.

Thus, we can’t let our guard down. We need to continue the fight against vile diseases and prevent senseless deaths. Of course, we can’t do this alone, as individuals. We need to raise awareness in our communities and take cautionary measures such as heightened hygiene. But perhaps the most important tool is in the hands of the national government. President Uhuru Kenyatta has made health care one of his top priorities since coming to office. Granted, while every government pledges to improve its nation’s health care system, he immediately followed up his campaign rhetoric with action - Universal Healthcare Coverage (UHC) is one of the Big Four Agenda.   

Adequate healthcare services are a basic human right. Yet, in 2013, the situation in Kenya was dismal. Only 20 per cent of Kenyans were covered by medical insurance. The need for a serious push forwards was thus obvious. Only healthy citizens can pitch in the hard work needed to turn Kenya into a middle-income economy by 2030. Expanding access to medical services, financially as well as geographically, is thus a national imperative. .  

And the best and most cost-efficient form of healthcare is preventive medicine – actions and substances that prevent diseases from occurring in the first place. There is a wide range of pre-emptive medicine; one of them every single one of us can do: To prevent obesity, walk more instead of hitching a ride for even the shortest distance. Washing your hands before eating is another, even simpler, example.

But there are also more sophisticated ways to prevent diseases: vaccines. Increasing vaccinations is a key element in the UHC success, as they are relatively simple answer to horrendous diseases, as explained above. While a campaign to vaccinate all children against Polio is already on its way, the World Health Organisation just started a pilot of malaria vaccination for children under two-years-old in Kenya. It published a report claiming that malaria could be eradicated in one or two generations’ time. To realise this ambitious prognosis, we need swift and coordinated action. It is no wonder, then, that the government is fully behind this initiative and helping the WHO to distribute the medicine and execute its procedures. As there are still more than one in four children in Kenya who suffer from malaria, the goal is surely worth the effort.

- The writer is Igembe North MP