News Article
From Deutsche Presse Agentur
HEADLINE:
Kenya's Kisii Highlands Struck by Deadly Form of Malaria
DATELINE: 11 August 1999 (Wednesday) - Kisil, Western Kenya
SECTION: International News
LENGTH: 553 words
BYLINE: By Thomas Burmeister, dpa
DATELINE: Kisii, Western Kenya
Nobody dies alone on Ward 5 in Kisii Provincial Hospital in the West of Kenya.
Nevertheless the death of a patient often goes unnoticed for hours, despite the
fact that the patients are crammed in - two, or even three, to a bed.
Many are so apathetic that they are not aware that someone has succumbed right
next to them.
While AIDS may have become the most devastating killer across much of Africa in
recent years, here in the Kisii Highlands a mysterious malaria epidemic has for
weeks been carrying off more people than any other disease, although the
region,
lying 1,800 metres above sea level, was previously regarded as largely
malaria-safe as a result of its altitude.
The mosquitoes bearing the malaria parasite should die quickly in the cool
nights of the highland plateau, but they have migrated from the considerably
warmer shores of Lake Victoria into the mountains and are surviving.
The outbreak has also caused alarm in Nairobi, which lies at the same altitude
and has thus far been free of the marial mosquito. When the first deaths
occurred in Kisii in May, Dr Wycliffe Mogoa did not believe he was faced
with an
epidemic, but since then the director of the completely overstretched Kisii
Provincial Hospital has seen more people die than in the rest of his previous
career.
The Kisii region has registered more than 700 deaths from malaria and around
20,000 people are ill with the disease, although the real numbers are probably
considerably higher.
"When the people in the villages feel headaches and fever coming on they think
they have a cold and simply take a cheap painkiller," Mogoa says.
Plasmodium falciparum
is responsible in 99 per cent of all cases, a parasite that causes the most
dangerous form of the disease, malaria tropicana, which can cause death within
12 hours if not treated.
"In addition, the falciparum parasite is now all but completely resistant
to the
usual medication," according to Bart de Porter of Medicins sans Frontiers.
"Chloroquine simply doesn't help."
Colonel Ronald Rosenberg, who is investigating the development of malaria in
East Africa for the United States armed forces, believes climatic changes are
primarily responsible. Under normal circumstances it ought to be extremely dry
around Kisii, but El Nino has changed that. Even the plateau nights are
now much
warmer than before, and it has been pouring almost every day for weeks,
although
this is the dry season.
Pools of stagnant water are everywhere, providing ideal breeding conditions for
the mosquitoes. Nevertheless, during the El Nino year of 1998 there was also
more rain and more standing water, but considerably fewer malaria cases than
this year.
Doctors in Kisii blame poverty for allowing the malarial plague to get out of
control.
"Nobody here can afford to take malarial prophylaxis all the time," one says,
and Kisii Hospital is also suffering the effects of a lack of funds, with
medicine soon to become as scarce as the beds themselves.
"If the rains ease off, we will soon have the worst behind us," Mogoa says in
hope, but looking up at the sky he can see more dark rainclouds
approaching. dpa
rm vc/kr
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