New malaria study has revealed that school going children are more prone to Malaria unlike in the past when children under the age of five and pregnant women were more vulnerable.<\/p>\n
According to research by MAC Communicable Diseases Action Centre, a Research Unit within the College of Medicine, done in the past three years, number of school aged children that are contracting the disease is increasing at an alarming rate.<\/p>\n
The survey which they conducted in the Southern Region indicates that 31 percent of school going children suffered from the disease while the infection rate among adults and other younger children is at 14 percent for each group.<\/p>\n
The findings prompted MAC Communicable Diseases Action Centre to donate Insecticide Treated Bed Nets to Kondanani Children\u2019s Village, Open Arms Orphanage and Lions Eyes Hospital.<\/p>\n
Speaking during the donation, Dr Atupele Kapito Tembo, who is Deputy Director of Malaria Alert Centre, explained that every year six million people suffer from Malaria and the new study shows that school going children are more prone to the disease than it was previously.<\/p>\n
The speculation behind the increase in infection rate is that school going children have for a long time been sidelined in Malaria interventions as the focus has been on pregnant women and the under five.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have not yet established the reason why school aged children are becoming more vulnerable since we are still studying but some experts are arguing that this group has been left out even in distribution of mosquito nets. We focused much on under five children and pregnant women but this study has helped us to consider this group which is now at high risk,\u201d said Dr Tembo.<\/p>\n
One of the beneficiaries, Director of Child Care Institutions Godknows Maseko said the nets were timely as Malaria is common during the rainy season.<\/p>\n
Maseko highlighted that government was about to close some of the care centres because they lacked capacity to protect children from diseases but with the new nets, they are now relieved.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe greatly appreciate what MAC Communicable Disease Action Centre has done today, some of us raise a large number of children and it is hard to get nets for all of them so this is very encouraging,\u201d said Maseko.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New malaria study has revealed that school going children are more prone to Malaria unlike in the past when children under the age of five and pregnant women were more vulnerable. According to research by MAC Communicable Diseases Action Centre, a Research Unit within the College of Medicine, done in the past three years, number […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19865"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19868,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19865\/revisions\/19868"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}