Malaria cases drop

Mpho Mokwape | Thursday November 15, 2018 09:15

The media-training workshop was aimed at fostering a relationships and coming up with measures on how best the journalists can work with the ministry in sensitising the public about malaria, its treatment and elimination. 

According to the ministry’s extended malaria strategic plan for 2014/2018 report, there has been downward trend of malaria cases both confirmed and clinical from 2006 to 2012. 

“The sharp increase from 2010 in unconfirmed cases was due to change in case definition of malaria from treating clinical cases to only those confirmed by laboratory test,” reads the report

The report also indicted that the decline was due to the fact that malaria programme uses a number of interventions to achieve the goal of malaria elimination. 

However despite the positive decline, Dr Refilwe Senyatso from the National Malaria Control Programme said there still a lot to do in sensitising the public about the disease. 

She explained that one loss of a person to malaria was one too many therefore there was a need for a total elimination. 

“There is a decline in cases but at the same time cases of malaria are still being recorded and lives are being lost sometimes due to late diagnosis,” she said.