BY OUR REPOTER
The Ministry of Health (MOH) is concerned over the inability of some areas to reduce transmission of malaria despite efforts employed for prevention and treatment of the illness.
The head of the Malaria Control Division in the Ministry of Health , says several parts of Eastern Uganda are still reporting up to ten malaria deaths every week and yet areas such as Namutumba have been prioritized in the prevention efforts such as the distribution of insecticide-treated nets and Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS).
Through their surveillance in Tororo district and Malaba border areas, Opigo says that they have observed that ten percent of the people they are treating with the recommended treatment regimen consisting of Arte-mi-sinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) popularly known as Coartem are not responding.
As a result, he says, they are asking clinicians to provide another generation of ACTs to re-treat them but add that the treatment failures could be a result of patients taking the medicines wrongly. He for instance says they require people taking this medicine to use it with a fatty meal.
Globally there have been rising concerns of resistance to ACTs, which is why the World Health Organization is developing a strategy for tackling the resistance to these therapies after medicines such as chloroquine, Fansidar, and quinine either developed resistance or were too toxic to be continued.
