The Ministry of Health and Population announced this week that the spread of malaria had been controlled in Al-Adwa and Edfu in the Aswan governorate. Two cases of the disease among 14 others had shown signs of improvement and were expected to be discharged from hospital on Saturday, the ministry said. The remaining cases were still under treatment at the Edfu Fever Hospital. Blood samples have been taken from a further 561 suspect cases, but none has proven to be infected with the disease.
The ministry had earlier raised the maximum status of preparedness at Aswan hospitals by giving special training to doctors in dealing with malaria. Minister of Health and Population Adel Al-Adawi has instructed hospitals to provide the best possible treatment of cases of the disease.
“A treatment plan has been developed to deal with this life-threatening disease. This is in addition to the measures of early detection and surveillance that had earlier been taken,” Al-Adawi said.
Amr Qandil, head of preventive medicine at the ministry, said that the first two cases had been discovered at Al-Adwa while the others were found in both Edfu and Al-Adwa.
The ministry had collected samples of mosquitoes in the area for examination, he said, in addition to spraying the habitat of mosquito larvae with insecticide. “An 11-member team from the preventive medicine department went to the infected villages to monitor the scale of the outbreak after the emergence of the cases of malaria,” Qandil said.
Mohamed Azmi, deputy to the health minister in the Aswan governorate, said that a further nine health teams had been formed to conduct checkups in Edfu, Kom Ombo and Esna.
Azmi said that the malaria parasite was transmitted to people by mosquitoes belonging to the genus anopheles. In rare cases, a person may contract malaria through contaminated blood, and the disease can be transmitted from a mother to her child before or during delivery.
“The malaria parasite is found in red blood cells, and so it can be transmitted through blood transfusions, organ transplants, or the shared use of needles or syringes,” Azmi said.
The parasites are spread to people through the bites of infected anopheles mosquitoes, called malaria vectors, which bite mainly between dusk and dawn.
Malaria is characterised by periodic attacks of chills, fever, headaches and vomiting. If not treated properly and quickly, it can become life-threatening by disrupting the blood supply to vital organs. Symptoms usually appear between 10 and 15 days after infection.
“The small outbreak in the Aswan governorate was due to Sudanese immigrants looking for work in the area. The workers may have been infected with the disease and then transmitted it to local residents,” Qandil said.
Mosquitoes may have bitten the workers, transmitting the virus, before laying eggs which will hatch larvae that carry the disease. Qandil attributed the spread of the disease to the existence of standing water and the lack of a proper sewage system.
Egypt suffered from a malaria epidemic in 1942-1944, when around one million people were infected and 200,000 died.
According to World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates from December 2013, there were about 207 million cases of malaria in 2012 (with an uncertainty range of 135 million to 287 million) and an estimated 627,000 deaths (with an uncertainty range of 473,000 to 789,000).
Malaria mortality rates have fallen by 42 per cent globally since 2000 and by 49 per cent in the African region.
Most deaths occur among children living in Africa where a child dies every minute from malaria, though malaria mortality rates among children in Africa have been reduced by an estimated 54 per cent since 2000.
According to the WHO, the best preventive measure is for individuals to protect themselves against mosquito bites as this represents the first line of defence for malaria prevention. “Indoor residual spraying with insecticides is also a very effective way to rapidly reduce malaria transmission,” it says.
