Ebola is wreaking havoc in West Africa and even though the outbreak has taken a toll on thousands of people, malaria is believed to be killing more people in West Africa than Ebola.
Malaria is transmitted when a person is bit by an infected female Anopheles mosquito. Nets for Life Africa, an American charitable organization, reveals that more than 207 million people around the world are infected with malaria each year and over half a million people die of the infection. However, 90 percent of the total malaria-related deaths occur in Africa.
The latest Ebola outbreak, which started earlier this year, has resulted in the deaths of over 7,500 people mainly in the western African countries of Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. The attention of healthcare workers in these countries has been diverted to Ebola. Doctors in some parts of Guinea reveal that they have stopped taking blood samples of people believed to have malaria infection.
Guinea has also reported a drop in malaria cases by 40 percent this year. Health experts suggest that even though malaria cases have dropped in the country it is not good news.
Dr. Bernard Nahlen, the deputy director of the U.S. President's Malaria Initiative, suggests that the decrease in malaria cases is mainly because people are scared to go to health clinics to get malaria treatment.
"It would be a major failure on the part of everybody involved to have a lot of people die from malaria in the midst of the Ebola epidemic," says Dr. Nahlen. "I would be surprised if there were not an increase in unnecessary malaria deaths in the midst of all this, and a lot of those will be young children."
In 2013, about 15,000 people in Guinea died due to malaria and 14,000 of these deaths were of children under the age of five years. The latest Ebola outbreak has resulted in the deaths of more than 1,600 people in Guinea.
About 12 million people in Guinea do not have access to health facilities and many infections, as well as deaths due to malaria can easily go unaccounted.
Healthcare agencies and professionals are busy dealing with the Ebola crisis. Malaria is also a consistent disease in the current Ebola-hit regions and healthcare agencies should not forget the disease, which kills thousands of people each year.
